Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  He stayed a short while pacing his garden, and then went indoors. It was getting dusk. Miss Blake had her things off and was alone in the drawing-room. The tea waited on the table.

  “Where’s Lucy?” he asked.

  “She went to her room to have her ankle seen to. I would have done anything for her, but she declined my services.”

  Karl knocked at his wife’s little sitting-room door, and entered. She was leaning on the window-sill, and said her ankle felt much better after the warm water, and since Aglaé had bound it up. Karl took her hand.

  “We were interrupted, Lucy, when I was asking an important question,” he began— “for indeed I think I must have misunderstood you. How does the putting an end to our estrangement lie with me?”

  “It does lie with you, Karl,” she answered, speaking feelingly and pleasantly, not in the cold tone of reserve she had of late maintained when they were alone. “The estrangement is miserable for me; you say it is for you; and the efforts we have to make, to keep up the farce before the household and the world, make it doubly miserable for both of us. We cannot undo our marriage: but to continue to live as we are living is most unsatisfactory and deplorable.”

  “But it is you who insisted on living so, Lucy — to my surprise and pain.”

  “Could I do otherwise?” she rejoined. “It is a most unhappy business altogether: and at times I am tempted to wish that it had been always kept from me. As you say — and I am willing to believe you, and do believe you — the past is past: but you know how much of the consequences remain. It seems to me that I must give way a little: perhaps, having taken my vows as your wife, it may be what I ought to do; a duty even in God’s sight.”

  “Do you recollect your words to me on the eve of our wedding-day, Lucy, when I was speaking of the possibility that a deeper blow might fall: one that would dishonour us both in the world’s eyes, myself primarily, you through me, and cause you to repent of our union? You should never repent, you said; you took me for richer for poorer, for better or for worse.”

  “But I did not know the blow would be of this kind,” murmured Lucy. “Still, I will do as you wish me — forget and forgive. At least if I cannot literally forget, for that would not be practicable, it shall be as though I did, for I will never allude to it by word or deed. That will be my concession, Karl. You must make one on your side.”

  “Willingly. What is it?”

  “Clear the Maze immediately of its tenants.”

  He gave a slight start, knitting his brow. Lucy saw the proposal was unpalatable?

  “Their being there is an insult to me, Karl,” she softly said, as if beseeching the boon. “You must get them away.”

  “I cannot, Lucy,” he answered, his face wrung with pain. “I wish I could! Don’t you understand that I have no control over this?”

  “I think I understand,” she said, her manner growing cold. “You have said as much before. Why can you not? It seems to me, if things be as you intimate, that the matter would be easily accomplished. You need only show firmness.”

  He thought how little she understood. But he could not bear to enlarge upon it, and said nothing.

  “There are houses enough, and to spare, in the world, Karl.”

  “Plenty of them.”

  “Then why not let the Maze be left?”

  “More things than one are against it, Lucy. There are wheels within wheels,” he added, thinking of Smith the mysterious agent. “One great element against it is the risk — the danger.”

  “Danger of exposure, do you mean?”

  “Of discovery. Yes.”

  Never had Karl Andinnian and his wife been so near coming to an enlightenment on the misunderstanding that lay between them and their peace. It passed off — just as many another good word passes off, unsaid, in life.

  “My hands are tied, Lucy. If wishing the Maze empty would effect it, it would be vacant to-morrow. I can do nothing.”

  “I understand,” she said bitterly, even as she had said once before, all the old resentful indignation rising up within her. “I understand, Sir Karl. There are complications, entanglements; and you cannot free yourself from them.”

  “Precisely so.”

  “Is the sin of the past?” she asked with flashing eyes and a rising colour; her voice betraying her frame of mind. He gazed at her, unable to understand.

  “Why of course it is past, Lucy. What can you mean?”

  “Oh, you know, you know. Never mind. We must go on again as we have been going on.”

  “No, Lucy.”

  “YES, Sir Karl. As long as those people remain in the Maze, tacitly to insult me, I will never be more to you than I am now.”

  It was a strangely harsh decision; and one he could not account for. He asked for her reasons in detail, but she would not give any. All she said further was, that if he felt dissatisfied, she could — and should — seek the protection of her father and declare the truth.

  So they parted again as they had parted before. Hemmed in on all sides, afraid to move an inch to the left or the right, Karl could only submit; he could do nothing.

  “I was charged by Miss Blake to tell you that tea is ready,” he said, turning on his heel to quit the room.

  “Ask her to send me a cup by Aglaé, please. I shall stay here to rest my ankle.” And as Karl closed the door upon her, poor Lucy burst into a flood of tears, and sobbed as though her heart would break. Underlying all else in her mind was a keen sense of insult, of slight, of humiliation: and she asked herself whether she ought to bear it.

  Pacing the gravel path round the trees of the Maze after dark had fallen — as much dark as a summer’s night ever gives us — were Karl Andinnian and Mrs. Grey. She, expecting him, went to wait for him just within the gate: as she did the evening Miss Blake had the satisfaction of watching and seeing. It was a still, hot night, and Mrs. Grey proposed that they should walk round the outer circle once, before going in: for she had things to say to him.

  “Why have you kept away these last few days, Karl?” she asked, taking the arm he offered her. “Adam has been so vexed and impatient over it: but I should not have ventured to write to you for only that — I hope you were not angry with me.”

  He told her he was not angry. He told her why he had kept away — that an instinct warned him it might be imprudent to come in too often. It seemed to him, he added, that the very hedges had eyes to watch him. She shivered a little, as though some chill of damp had struck her; and proceeded to relate what she had to say.

  By a somewhat singular coincidence, a copy of the same newspaper that contained the mysterious paragraph had been bought at the little newsvendor’s in Fox wood by Ann Hopley, who was fond of reading the news when her day’s work was over. She saw the paragraph, took alarm, and showed it to her master and mistress. —

  “It has nearly frightened me to death, Karl,” said Mrs. Grey. “The paper was a week old when Ann bought it: and I am glad it was, or I should have been living upon thorns longer than I have been.”

  He told her that he had seen it. And he did what he could to reassure her, saying it was probably but an unmeaning assertion, put in from dearth of news.

  “That is just what Mr. Smith says,” she replied.

  “He thinks it is from the brain of some poor penny-a-liner” —

  “Mr. Smith!” exclaimed Karl “How do you know?”

  “Adam would see him about it, and I sent for him. He, Smith, says there’s nothing for it now but staying here; and Adam seems to be of the same opinion.”

  “Were you present at their interview?”

  “No. I never am. The man is keeping us here for purposes of his own. I feel sure of it. He has been a good friend to us in many ways: I don’t know what we should have done without him; but it is his fault that we are staying on here.”

  “Undoubtedly it is.”

  “Adam is just as careless and gay as ever in manner, but I think the announcement in the newspaper has made him secretl
y uneasy. He is not well to-night.”

  “What is the matter with him?”

  “It is some inward pain: he has complained of it more than once lately. And he has been angry and impatient of an evening because you did not come. It is so lonely for him, you know.”

  “I do know it, Rose. Nothing brings me here at all but that.” —

  “It was he who at last made me write to you today. I was not sorry to do it, for I had wanted to see you myself and to talk to you. I think I have discovered something that may be useful; at least that we may turn to use. First of all — Do you remember a year or two ago there was a public stir about one Philip Salter?”

  “No. Who is Philip Salter?”

  “Philip Salter committed a great crime: forgery, I think: and he escaped from the hands of the police as they were bringing him to London by rail I have nearly a perfect recollection of it,” continued Mrs. Grey, “for my uncle and aunt took great interest in it, because they knew one of the people whom Salter had defrauded. He was never retaken. At least, I never heard of it.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “More than two years. It was in spring-time, I think.”

  Karl Andinnian threw his recollection back. The name, Philip Salter, certainly seemed to begin to strike on some remote chord of his memory; but he had completely forgotten its associations.

  “What of him, Rose?” he asked.

  “This,” she answered, her voice taking even a lower tone: “I should not be surprised if this Mr. Smith is the escaped man, Philip Salter! I think he may be.”

  “This man, Smith, Philip Salter!” exclaimed Karl. “But what grounds have you for thinking it?”

  “I will tell you. When Mr. Smith came over a day or two ago, it was in the evening, growing dusk. Adam saw him in the upstairs room. They stood at the window — perhaps for the sake of the light, and seemed to be looking over some memorandum paper. I was walking about outside, and saw them. All at once something fell down from the window. I ran to pick it up, and found it was a pocket-book, lying open. Mr. Smith shouted out, ‘Don’t touch it, Mrs. Grey: don’t trouble yourself,’ and came rushing down the stairs. But I had picked it up, Karl; and I saw written inside it the name, Philip Salter. Without the least intention or thought of prying, I saw it: ‘Philip Salter.’ Mr. Smith was up with me the next moment, and I gave him the pocket-book, closed.”

  “His Christian name is certainly Philip,” observed Karl after a pause of thought. “I have seen his signature to receipts for rent— ‘Philip Smith.’ This is a strange thing, Rose.”

  “Yes — if it be true. While he is planted here, spying upon Adam, he may be hiding from justice himself, a criminal.”

  Karl was in deep thought. “Was the name in the pocket-book on the fly-leaf, Rose — as though it were the owner’s name?”

  “I think so, but I cannot be sure. It was at the top of a leaf certainly. If we could but find it out — find that it is so, it might prove to be a way of release from him,” she added; “I mean some way or other of release might come of it. Oh, and think of the blessing of feeling free! I am sure that, but for him, Adam would contrive to escape to a safer land.”

  There was no time to say more. The night was drawing on, and Karl had to go in to his impatient brother. Impatient! What should we have been in his place? Poor Adam Andinnian! In his banned, hidden, solitary days, what interlude had he to look forward to but these occasional visits from Karl?

  “I will think it over, Rose, and try and find something out,” said Karl as they went in. “Have you told Adam?”

  “No. He is so hot and impulsive, you know. I thought it best to speak to you first.”

  “Quite right. Say nothing to him at present.”

  In quitting the Maze that evening, Adam, in spite of all Karl could say or do, would walk with him to the gate: only laughing when Karl called it dangerous recklessness. There were moments when the same doubt crossed Karl’s mind that had been once suggested to him by Mr. Plunkett — Was Adam always and altogether sane? This moment was one. He Absolutely stood at the gate, talking and laughing in an undertone, as Karl went through it.

  “Rubbish, Karlo, old fellow,” said he to the last remonstrance. “It’s a dark night, and not a soul within miles of us. Besides, who knows me here?”

  Karl had locked the gate and was putting the key in his pocket, when a sound smote his ear and he turned it to listen. The tramp, tramp, as of policemen walking with measured steps was heard, coming from the direction of the railway-station, and with it the scuffle and hum of a besetting crowd. It brought into his mind with a rush and a whirl that fatal night some twelve months before, when he had heard the tramp of policemen on the other side the hedge — and their prisoner, though he knew it not, was his brother, Adam Andinnian.

  “Adam, do you hear!” he cried hoarsely. “For the love of heaven, hide yourself.” And Sir Adam disappeared in the Maze.

  What with the past recollection, what with his brother’s near presence, what with the approach of these police — as he took them to be — what with the apprehension ever overlying his heart, Karl was seized with a panic of terror. Were they coming in search of Adam? He thought so: and all the agony that he often went over in his dreams, he suffered now in waking reality. The hubbub of exposure; the public disgrace; the renewed hard life for him at Portland Island; even perhaps — Karl’s imagination was vivid just then — the scaffold in the distance as an ending! These visions surging through his brain, Karl flew to the other side of the road — lest his being on the side of the Maze might bring suspicion on it — and then walked quietly to his own entrance gates. There he stood, and turned to await the event, his head beating, his pulses leaping.

  With a relief that no tongue could express, Karl saw them pass the Maze and come onwards. Presently, in the night’s imperfect light, he distinguished a kind of covered stretcher, or hand-barrow, borne by a policeman and other men, a small mob following.

  “Is anything amiss?” he asked, taking a few steps into the road, and speaking in the quietest tones he could just then command.

  “It’s poor Whittle, Sir Karl,” replied the policeman — who knew him. There were a few scattered cottages skirting the wood beyond the Court, and Karl recognized the name, Whittle, as that of a man who lived in one of them and worked at the railway-station.

  “Is he ill?” asked Karl.

  “He is dead, Sir Karl. He was missed from his work in the middle of the afternoon and not found till an hour ago: there he was, stretched out in the field, dead. We got Mr. Moore round, and he thinks it must have been a sun-stroke.”

  “What a sad thing!” cried Karl, in his pitying accents. “Does his wife know?”

  “We’ve sent on to prepare her, poor woman! There’s four or five little children, Sir Karl, more’s the pity!”

  “Ay; I know there are some. Tell her I will come in and see her in the morning.”

  A murmur of approbation at the last words arose from the bystanders. It seemed to them an earnest that the new baronet, Sir Karl, would turn out to be a kind and considerate man; as good for them perhaps as Sir Joseph had been.

  He listened to the tramp, tramp, until it had died away, and then turned in home with all his trouble and care: determined to search the newspapers — filed by Sir Joseph — before he went to rest, for some particulars of this Philip Salter.

  “Oh that Adam were but safe in some less dangerous land!” was the refrain, ever eating itself into his brain.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  In the same Train.

  “You must step out sharp, Sir Karl. The train is on the move.”

  Sir Karl Andinnian had gone hastening into the railway-station, late, on Monday morning, to catch the eleven o’clock train, and was taking a ticket for London. It was the station-master who had addressed him, as he handed him his ticket One of the porters held open the door of a first-class compartment, and Sir Karl jumped in.

  A lady was gathered into the corner
beyond him, her veil down: there was no one else in the carriage. Karl did not look round at her until the train had left the station. And when he saw who it was, he thought his eyes must be playing him false.

  “Why, Rose!” he exclaimed. “Can it be you?”

  She smiled and threw her veil back, leaning towards him at the same moment to explain why she was there. The whistle set up a shriek at the time, and though Sir Karl, his ear bent close to her, no doubt heard the explanation, the air of the carriage did not. “Slight accident — last night — quite useless — would have me come — Rennet—” were all the disconnected words that caught. —

  “I quite shrunk from the journey at first,” she said, when the whistle had subsided. “I feel always shy and timid now: but I am not sorry to go, for it will give me the opportunity of making some needful purchases. I would rather do it in London than Basham; in fact, I should not dare to go to Basham myself: and I did not care to trust Ann Hopley to buy these fine little things.”

  “Is Adam better?”

  “Yes, I think so: he seemed pretty well yesterday. You did not come to the Maze last night, Karl. He was wishing for you.”

  Karl turned off the subject. The fright he had had, coming out on Saturday night, would serve to keep him away for some days to come. In his heart of hearts he believed that, in the interests of prudence, the less he went to the Maze the better: instinct was always telling him so. —

  “I suppose you will return to-night, Rose?”

  “If I can,” she answered. “It depends on Rennet. Should I be obliged to wait until to-morrow, I shall have to sleep at an hotel: Adam has directed me to one.” And so the conversation innocently progressed, and the train went on.