At six in the morning, one of the two labourers who had remained faithful to Arthur was sent away on horseback with the housekeeper's reply, and with orders to wait for an answer. Allowing time for giving the horse a rest, the man might be expected to return before noon.
IX
IT was a fine sunshiny day; Mrs. Lewson's spirits began to improve. "I have always held the belief," the worthy old woman confessed, "that bright weather brings good luck—of course provided the day is not a Friday. This is Wednesday. Cheer up, Miss."
The messenger returned with good news. Mr. Arthur had been as merry as usual. He had made fun of another letter of good advice, received without a signature. "But Mrs. Lewson must have her way," he said. "My love to the old dear—I'll start two hours later, and be back to dinner at five."
"Where did Mr. Arthur give you that message?" Iris inquired.
"At the stables, Miss, while I was putting up the horse. The men about were all on the broad grin when they heard Mr. Arthur's message."
Still in a morbid state of mind, Iris silently regretted that the message had not been written, instead of being delivered by word of mouth. Here, again, she (like the wild lord) had been afraid of listeners.
The hours wore slowly on until it was past four o'clock. Iris could endure the suspense no longer. "It's a lovely afternoon," she said to Mrs. Lewson. "Let us take a walk along the road, and meet Arthur." To this proposal the housekeeper readily agreed.
It was nearly five o'clock when they reached a place at which a by-road branched off, through a wood, from the highway which they had hitherto followed. Mrs. Lewson found a seat on a felled tree. "We had better not go any farther," she said.
Iris asked if there was any reason for this.
There was an excellent reason. A few yards farther on, the high road had been diverted from the straight line (in the interest of a large agricultural village), and was then directed again into its former course. The by-road through the wood served as a short cut, for horsemen and pedestrians, from one divergent point to the other. It was next to a certainty that Arthur would return by the short cut. But if accident or caprice led to his preferring the highway, it was clearly necessary to wait for him within view of both the roads.
Too restless to submit to a state of passive expectation, Iris proposed to follow the bridle path through the wood for a little way, and to return if she failed to see anything of Arthur. "You are tired," she said kindly to her companion: "pray don't move."
Mrs. Lewson looked needlessly uneasy: "You might lose yourself, Miss. Mind you keep to the path!"
Iris followed the pleasant windings of the woodland track. In the hope of meeting Arthur she considerably extended the length of her walk. The white line of the high road, as it passed the farther end of the wood, showed itself through the trees. She turned at once to rejoin Mrs. Lewson.
On her way back she made a discovery. A ruin which she had not previously noticed showed itself among the trees on her left hand. Her curiosity was excited; she strayed aside to examine it more closely. The crumbling walls, as she approached them, looked like the remains of an ordinary dwelling-house. Age is essential to the picturesque effect of decay: a modern ruin is an unnatural and depressing object—and here the horrid thing was.
As she turned to retrace her steps to the road, a man walked out of the inner space enclosed by all that was left of the dismantled house. A cry of alarm escaped her. Was she the victim of destiny, or the sport of chance? There was the wild lord whom she had vowed never to see again: the master of her heart—perhaps the master of her fate!
Any other man would have been amazed to see her, and would have asked how it had happened that the English lady presented herself to him in an Irish wood. This man enjoyed the delight of seeing her, and accepted it as a blessing that was not to be questioned. "My angel has dropped from Heaven," he said. "May Heaven be praised!"
He approached her; his arms closed round her. She struggled to free herself from his embrace. At that moment they both heard the crackle of breaking underwood among the trees behind them. Lord Harry looked round. "This is a dangerous place," he whispered; "I'm waiting to see Arthur pass safely. Submit to be kissed, or I am a dead man." His eyes told her that he was truly and fearfully in earnest. Her head sank on his bosom. As he bent down and kissed her, three men approached from their hiding-place among the trees. They had no doubt been watching him, under orders from the murderous brotherhood to which they belonged. Their pistols were ready in their hands—and what discovery had they made? There was the brother who had been denounced as having betrayed them, guilty of no worse treason than meeting his sweetheart in a wood! "We beg your pardon, my lord," they cried, with a thoroughly Irish enjoyment of their own discomfiture—and burst into a roar of laughter—and left the lovers together. For the second time, Iris had saved Lord Harry at a crisis in his life.
"Let me go!" she pleaded faintly, trembling with superstitious fear for the first time in her experience of herself.
He held her to him as if he would never let her go again. "Oh, my Sweet, give me a last chance. Help me to be a better man! You have only to will it, Iris, and to make me worthy of you."
His arms suddenly trembled round her, and dropped. The silence was broken by a distant sound, like the report of a shot. He looked towards the farther end of the wood. In a minute more, the thump of a horse's hoofs at a gallop was audible, where the bridlepath was hidden among the trees. It came nearer—nearer—-the creature burst into view, wild with fright, and carrying an empty saddle. Lord Harry rushed into the path and seized the horse as it swerved at the sight of him. There was a leather pocket attached to the front of the saddle. "Search it!" he cried to Iris, forcing the terrified animal back on its haunches. She drew out a silver travelling-flask. One glance at the name engraved on it told him the terrible truth. His trembling hands lost their hold. The horse escaped; the words burst from his lips:
"Oh, God, they've killed him!"
THE END OF THE PROLOGUE
THE STORY
FIRST PERIOD
CHAPTER I
THE SOUR FRENCH WINE
WHILE the line to be taken by the new railway between Culm and Everill was still under discussion, the engineer caused some difference of opinion among the moneyed men who were the first Directors of the Company, by asking if they proposed to include among their Stations the little old town of Honeybuzzard.
For years past, commerce had declined, and population had decreased in this ancient and curious place. Painters knew it well, and prized its mediaeval houses as a mine of valuable material for their art. Persons of cultivated tastes, who were interested in church architecture of the fourteenth century, sometimes pleased and flattered the Rector by subscribing to his fund for the restoration of the tower, and the removal of the accumulated rubbish of hundreds of years from the crypt. Small speculators, not otherwise in a state of insanity, settled themselves in the town, and tried the desperate experiment of opening a shop; spent their little capital, put up the shutters, and disappeared. The old market-place still showed its list of market-law's, issued by the Mayor and Corporation in the prosperous bygone times; and every week there were fewer and fewer people to obey the laws. The great empty enclosure looked more cheerful, when there was no market held, and when the boys of the town played in the deserted place. In the last warehouse left in a state of repair, the crane was generally idle; the windows were mostly shut up; and a solitary man represented languishing trade, idling at a half-opened door. The muddy river rose and fell with the distant tide. At rare intervals a collier discharged its cargo on the mouldering quay, or an empty barge took in a load of hay. One bold house advertised, in a dirty window, apartments to let. There was a lawyer in the town, who had no occasion to keep a clerk; and there was a doctor who hoped to sell his practice for anything that it would fetch. The directors of the new railway, after a stormy meeting, decided on offering (by means of a Station) a last chance of revival to the dying town.
The town had not vitality enough left to be grateful; the railway stimulant produced no effect. Of all his colleagues in Great Britain and Ireland, the station-master at Honeybuzzard was the idlest man—and this, as he said to the unemployed porter, through no want of energy on his own part.
Late on a rainy autumn afternoon, the slow train left one traveller at the Station. He got out of a first-class carriage; he carried an umbrella and a travelling-bag; and he asked his way to the best inn. The station-master and the porter compared notes. One of them said: "Evidently a gentleman." The other added: "What can he possibly want here?"
The stranger twice lost his way in the tortuous old streets of the town before he reached the inn. On giving his orders, it appeared that he wanted three things: a private room, something to eat, and, while the dinner was being cooked, materials for writing a letter.
Answering her daughter's questions downstairs, the landlady described her guest as a nice-looking man dressed in deep mourning. "Young, my dear, with beautiful dark brown hair, and a grand beard, and a sweet sorrowful look. Ah, his eyes would tell anybody that his black clothes are not a mere sham. Whether married or single, of course I can't say. But I noticed the name on his travelling-bag. A distinguished name in my opinion—Hugh Mountjoy. I wonder what he'll order to drink when he has his dinner? What a mercy it will be if we can get rid of another bottle of the sour French wine!"
The bell in the private room rang at that moment; and the landlady's daughter, it is needless to say, took the opportunity of forming her own opinion of Mr. Hugh Mountjoy.
She returned with a letter in her hand, consumed by a vain longing for the advantages of gentle birth. "Ah, mother, if I was a young lady of the higher classes, I know whose wife I should like to be!" Not particularly interested in sentimental aspirations, the landlady asked to see Mr. Mountjoy's letter. The messenger who delivered it was to wait for an answer. It was addressed to: "Miss Henley, care of Clarence Vimpany, Esquire, Honeybuzzard." Urged by an excited imagination, the daughter longed to see Miss Henley. The mother was at a loss to understand why Mr. Mountjoy should have troubled himself to write the letter at all. "If he knows the young lady who is staying at the doctor's house," she said, "why doesn't he call on Miss Henley?" She handed the letter back to her daughter. "There! let the ostler take it; he's got nothing to do."
"No, mother. The ostler's dirty hands mustn't touch it—I'll take the letter myself. Perhaps I may see Miss Henley." Such was the impression which Mr. Hugh Mountjoy had innocently produced on a sensitive young person, condemned by destiny to the barren sphere of action afforded by a country inn!
The landlady herself took the dinner upstairs—a first course of mutton chops and potatoes, cooked to a degree of imperfection only attained in an English kitchen. The sour French wine was still on the good woman's mind. "What would you choose to drink, sir?" she asked. Mr. Mountjoy seemed to feel no interest in what he might have to drink. "We have some French wine, sir."
"Thank you, ma'am; that will do."
When the bell rang again, and the time came to produce the second course of cheese and celery, the landlady allowed the waiter to take her place. Her experience of the farmers who frequented the inn, and who had in some few cases been induced to taste the wine, warned her to anticipate an outbreak of just anger from Mr. Mountjoy. He, like the others, would probably ask what she "meant by poisoning him with such stuff as that." On the return of the waiter, she put the question: "Did the gentleman complain of the French wine?"
"He wants to see you about it, ma'am."
The landlady turned pale. The expression of Mr. Mountjoy's indignation was evidently reserved for the mistress of the house. "Did he swear," she asked, "when he tasted it?"
"Lord bless you, ma'am, no! Drank it out of a tumbler, and—if you will believe me—actually seemed to like it."
The landlady recovered her colour. Gratitude to Providence for having sent a customer to the inn, who could drink sour wine without discovering it, was the uppermost feeling in her ample bosom as she entered the private room. Mr. Mountjoy justified her anticipations. He was simple enough—with his tumbler before him, and the wine as it were under his nose—to begin with an apology.
"I am sorry to trouble you, ma'am. May I ask where you got this wine?"
"The wine, sir, was one of my late husband's bad debts. It was all he could get from a Frenchman who owed him money."
"It's worth money, ma'am."
"Indeed, sir?"
"Yes, indeed. This is some of the finest and purest claret that I have tasted for many a long day past."
An alarming suspicion disturbed the serenity of the landlady's mind. Was his extraordinary opinion of the wine sincere? Or was it Mr. Mountjoy's wicked design to entrap her into praising her claret and then to imply that she was a cheat by declaring what he really thought of it? She took refuge in a cautious reply:
"You are the first gentleman, sir, who has not found fault with it."
"In that case, perhaps you would like to get rid of the wine?" Mr. Mountjoy suggested.
The landlady was still cautious. "Who will buy it of me, sir?"
"I will. How much do you charge for it by the bottle?"
It was, by this time, clear that he was not mischievous—only a little crazy. The worldly-wise hostess took advantage of that circumstance to double the price. Without hesitation, she said: "Five shillings a bottle, sir."
Often, too often, the irony of circumstances brings together, on this earthly scene, the opposite types of vice and virtue. A lying landlady and a guest incapable of deceit were looking at each other across a narrow table; equally unconscious of the immeasurable moral gulf that lay between them, Influenced by honourable feeling, innocent Hugh Mountjoy lashed the landlady's greed for money to the full-gallop of human cupidity.
"I don't think you are aware of the value of your wine," he said. "I have claret in my cellar which is not so good as this, and which costs more than you have asked. It is only fair to offer you seven-and-sixpence a bottle."
When an eccentric traveller is asked to pay a price, and deliberately raises that price against himself, where is the sensible woman—especially if she happens to be a widow conducting an unprofitable business—who would hesitate to improve the opportunity? The greedy landlady raised her terms.
"On reflection, sir, I think I ought to have ten shillings a bottle, if you please."
"The wine may be worth it," Mountjoy answered quietly; "but it is more than I can afford to pay. No, ma'am; I will leave you to find some lover of good claret with a longer purse than mine."
It was in this man's character, when he said No, to mean No. Mr. Mountjoy's hostess perceived that her crazy customer was not to be trifled with. She lowered her terms again with the headlong hurry of terror. "You shall have it, Sir, at your own price," said this entirely shameless and perfectly respectable woman.
The bargain having been closed under these circumstances, the landlady's daughter knocked at the door. "I took your letter myself, sir," she said modestly; "and here is the answer." (She had seen Miss Henley, and did not think much of her.) Mountjoy offered the expression of his thanks, in words never to be forgotten by a sensitive young person, and opened his letter. It was short enough to be read in a moment; but it was evidently a favourable reply. He took his hat in a hurry, and asked to be shown the way to Mr. Vimpany's house.
CHAPTER II
THE MAN SHE REFUSED
MOUNTJOY had decided on travelling to Honeybuzzard, as soon as he heard that Miss Henley was staying with strangers in that town. Having had no earlier opportunity of preparing her to see him, he had considerately written to her from the inn, in preference to presenting himself unexpectedly at the doctor's house. How would she receive the devoted friend, whose proposal of marriage she had refused for the second time, when they had last met in London?
The doctor's place of residence, situated in a solitary by-street, commanded a view, not perhaps encouraging to a gentleman who followe
d the medical profession: it was a view of the churchyard. The door was opened by a woman-servant, who looked suspiciously at the stranger. Without waiting to be questioned, she said her master was out. Mountjoy mentioned his name, and asked for Miss Henley.
The servant's manner altered at once for the better; she showed him into a small drawing-room, scantily and cheaply furnished. Some poorly-framed prints on the walls (a little out of place perhaps in a doctor's house) represented portraits of famous actresses, who had been queens of the stage in the early part of the present century. The few books, too, collected on a little shelf above the chimney-piece, were in every case specimens of dramatic literature. "Who reads these plays?" Mountjoy asked himself. "And how did Iris find her way into this house?"
While he was thinking of her, Miss Henley entered the room.
Her face was pale and careworn; tears dimmed her eyes when Mountjoy advanced to meet her. In his presence, the horror of his brother's death by assassination shook Iris as it had not shaken her yet. Impulsively, she drew his head down to her, with the fond familiarity of a sister, and kissed his forehead. "Oh, Hugh, I know how you and Arthur loved each other! No words of mine can say how I feel for you."
"No words are wanted, my dear," he answered tenderly. "Your sympathy speaks for itself."
He led her to the sofa and seated himself by her side. "Your father has shown me what you have written to him," he resumed; "your letter from Dublin and your second letter from this place. I know what you have so nobly risked and suffered in poor Arthur's interests. It will be some consolation to me if I can make a return—a very poor return, Iris—for all that Arthur's brother owes to the truest friend that ever man had. No," he continued, gently interrupting the expression of her gratitude. "Your father has not sent me here—but he knows that I have left London for the express purpose of seeing you, and he knows why. You have written to him dutifully and affectionately; you have pleaded for pardon and reconciliation, when he is to blame. Shall I venture to tell you how he answered me, when I asked if he had no faith left in his own child? 'Hugh,' he said, 'you are wasting words on a man whose mind is made up. I will trust my daughter when that Irish lord is laid in his grave—not before.' That is a reflection on you, Iris, which I cannot permit, even when your father casts it. He is hard, he is unforgiving; but he must, and shall, be conquered yet. I mean to make him do you justice; I have come here with that purpose, and that purpose only, in view. May I speak to you of Lord Harry?"
Blind Love Page 5