There he lay on a shabby little sofa, in an ugly little room; his eyes closed; one helpless hand hanging down; a stillness on his ghastly face, horribly suggestive of the stillness of death—there he lay, the reckless victim of his love for the woman who had desperately renounced him again and again, who had now saved him for the third time. Ah, how her treacherous heart pleaded for him! Can you drive him away from you after this? You, who love him, what does your cold-blooded prudence say, when you look at him now?
She felt herself drawn, roughly and suddenly, back into the passage. The door was closed; the doctor was whispering to her. "Hold up, Miss! I expected better things of you. Come! come!—no fainting. You'll find him a different man to-morrow. Pay us a visit, and judge for yourself."
After what she had suffered, Iris hungered for sympathy. "Isn't it pitiable?" she said to her maid as they left the house.
"I don't know, Miss."
"You don't know? Good heavens, are you made of stone? Have you no such thing as a heart in you?"
"Not for the men," Fanny answered. "I keep my pity for the women."
Iris knew what bitter remembrances made their confession in those words. How she missed Rhoda Bennet at that moment!
CHAPTER XIX
MR. HENLEY AT HOME
FOR a month, Mountjoy remained in his cottage on the shores of the Solway Firth, superintending the repairs.
His correspondence with Iris was regularly continued; and, for the first time in his experience of her, was a cause of disappointment to him.
Her replies revealed an incomprehensible change in her manner of writing, which became more and more marked in each succeeding instance. Notice it as he might in his own letters, no explanation followed on the part of his correspondent. She, who had so frankly confided her joys and sorrows to him in past days, now wrote with a reserve which seemed only to permit the most vague and guarded allusion to herself. The changes in the weather; the alternation of public news that was dull, and public news that was interesting; the absence of her father abroad, occasioned by doubt of the soundness of his investments in foreign securities; vague questions relating to Hugh's new place of abode, which could only have proceeded from a preoccupied mind—these were the topics on which Iris dwelt, in writing to her faithful old friend. It was hardly possible to doubt that something must have happened, which she had reasons—serious reasons, as it seemed only too natural to infer—for keeping concealed from Mountjoy. Try as he might to disguise it from himself, he now knew how dear, how hopelessly dear, she was to him by the anxiety that he suffered, and by the jealous sense of injury which defied his self-command. His immediate superintendence of the workmen at the cottage was no longer necessary. Leaving there a representative whom he could trust, he resolved to answer his last letter, received from Iris, in person.
The next day he was in London.
Calling at the house, he was informed that Miss Henley was not at home, and that it was impossible to say with certainty when she might return. While he was addressing his inquiries to the servant, Mr. Henley opened the library door. "Is that you, Mountjoy?" he asked. "Come in: I want to speak to you."
Short and thick-set, with a thin-lipped mouth, a coarsely-florid complexion, and furtive greenish eyes; hard in his manner, and harsh in his voice; Mr. Henley was one of the few heartless men, who are innocent of deception on the surface: he was externally a person who inspired, at first sight, feelings of doubt and dislike. His manner failed to show even a pretence of being glad to see Hugh. What he had to say, he said walking up and down the room, and scratching his bristly iron-gray hair from time to time. Those signs of restlessness indicated, to those who knew him well, that he had a selfish use to make of a fellow-creature, and failed to see immediately how to reach the end in view.
"I say, Mountjoy," he began, "have you any idea of what my daughter is about?"
"I don't even understand what you mean," Hugh replied. "For the last month I have been in Scotland."
"You and she write to each other, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Hasn't she told you—"
"Excuse me for interrupting you, Mr. Henley; she has told me nothing."
Mr. Henley stared absently at the superbly-bound books on his library-shelves (never degraded by the familiar act of reading), and scratched his head more restlessly than ever.
"Look here, young man. When you were staying with me in the country, I rather hoped it might end in a marriage engagement. You and Iris disappointed me—not for the first time. But women do change their minds. Suppose she had changed her mind, after having twice refused you? Suppose she had given you an opportunity—"
Hugh interrupted him again. "It's needless to suppose anything of the sort, sir; she would not have given me an opportunity."
"Don't fence with me, Mountjoy! I'll put it in a milder way, if you prefer being humbugged. Do you feel any interest in that perverse girl of mine?"
Hugh answered readily and warmly: "The truest interest!"
Even Mr. Henley was human; his ugly face looked uglier still. It assumed the self-satisfied expression of a man who had carried his point.
"Now I can go on, my friend, with what I had to say to you. I have been abroad on business, and only came back the other day. The moment I saw Iris I noticed something wrong about her. If I had been a stranger, I should have said: That young woman is not easy in her mind. Perfectly useless to speak to her about it. Quite happy and quite well—there was her own account of herself. I tried her maid next, a white-livered sulky creature, one of the steadiest liars I have ever met with. 'I know of nothing amiss with my mistress, sir.' There was the maid's way of keeping the secret, whatever it may be! I don't know whether you may have noticed it, in the course of your acquaintance with me—I hate to be beaten."
"No, Mr. Henley, I have not noticed it."
"Then you are informed of it now. Have you seen my housekeeper?"
"Once or twice, sir."
"Come! you're improving; we shall make something of you in course of time. Well, the housekeeper was the next person I spoke to about my daughter. Had she seen anything strange in Miss Iris, while I was away from home? There's a dash of malice in my housekeeper's composition; I don't object to a dash of malice. When the old woman is pleased, she shows her yellow fangs. She had something to tell me: 'The servants have been talking, sir, about Miss Iris.' 'Out with it, ma'am! what do they say?' 'They notice, sir, that their young lady has taken to going out in the forenoon, regularly every day: always by herself, and always in the same direction. I don't encourage the servants, Mr. Henley: there was something insolent in the tone of suspicion that they adopted. I told them that Miss Iris was merely taking her walk. They reminded me that it must be a cruelly long walk; Miss Iris being away regularly for four or five hours together, before she came back to the house. After that' (says the housekeeper) 'I thought it best to drop the subject.' What do you think of it yourself, Mountjoy? Do you call my daughter's conduct suspicious?"
"I see nothing suspicious, Mr. Henley. When Iris goes out, she visits a friend."
"And always goes in the same direction, and always visits the same friend," Mr. Henley added. "I felt a curiosity to know who that friend might be; and I made the discovery yesterday. When you were staying in my house in the country, do you remember the man who waited on you?"
Mountjoy began to feel alarmed for Iris; he answered as briefly as possible.
"Your valet," he said.
"That's it! Well, I took my valet into my confidence—not for the first time, I can tell you: an invaluable fellow. When Iris went out yesterday, he tracked her to a wretched little suburban place near Hampstead Heath, called Redburn Road. She rang the bell at Number Five, and was at once let in—evidently well known there. My clever man made inquiries in the neighbourhood. The house belongs to a doctor, who has lately taken it. Name of Vimpany."
Mountjoy was not only startled, but showed it plainly. Mr. Henley, still pacing backwards and forwa
rds, happened by good fortune to have his back turned towards his visitor, at that moment.
"Now I ask you, as a man of the world," Mr. Henley resumed, "what does this mean? If you're too cautious to speak out—and I must say it looks like it—shall I set you the example?"
"Just as you please, sir."
"Very well, then; I'll tell you what I suspect. When Iris is at home, and when there's something amiss in my family, I believe that scoundrel Lord Harry to be at the bottom of it. There's my experience, and there's my explanation. I was on the point of ordering my carriage, to go to the doctor myself, and insist on knowing what the attraction is that takes my daughter to his house, when I heard your voice in the hall. You tell me you are interested in Iris. Very well; you are just the man to help me."
"May I ask how, Mr. Henley?"
"Of course you may. You can find your way to her confidence, if you choose to try; she will trust you, when she won't trust her father. I don't care two straws about her other secrets; but I do want to know whether she is, or is not, plotting to marry the Irish blackguard. Satisfy me about that, and you needn't tell me anything more. May I count on you to find out how the land lies?"
Mountjoy listened, hardly able to credit the evidence of his own senses; he was actually expected to insinuate himself into the confidence of Iris, and then to betray her to her father! He rose, and took his hat—and, without even the formality of a bow, opened the door.
"Does that mean No?" Mr. Henley called after him.
"Most assuredly," Mountjoy answered—and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER XX
FIRST SUSPICIONS OF IRIS
FROM the last memorable day, on which Iris had declared to him that he might always count on her as his friend, but never as his wife, Hugh had resolved to subject his feelings to a rigorous control. As to conquering his hopeless love, he knew but too well that it would conquer him, on any future occasion when he and Iris happened to meet.
He had been true to his resolution, at what cost of suffering he, and he alone knew. Sincerely, unaffectedly, he had tried to remain her friend. But the nature of the truest and the firmest man has its weak place, where the subtle influence of a woman is concerned. Deeply latent, beyond the reach of his own power of sounding, there was jealousy of the Irish lord lurking in Mountjoy, and secretly leading his mind when he hesitated in those emergencies of his life which were connected with Iris. Ignorant of the influence which was really directing him, he viewed with contempt Mr. Henley's suspicions of a secret understanding between his daughter and the man who was, by her own acknowledgment, unworthy of the love with which it had been her misfortune to regard him. At the same time, Hugh's mind was reluctantly in search of an explanation, which might account (without degrading Iris) for her having been traced to the doctor's house. In his recollection of events at the old country town, he found a motive for her renewal of intercourse with such a man as Mr. Vimpany, in the compassionate feeling with which she regarded the doctor's unhappy wife. There might well be some humiliating circumstance, recently added to the other trials of Mrs. Vimpany's married life, which had appealed to all that was generous and forgiving in the nature of Iris. Knowing nothing of the resolution to live apart which had latterly separated the doctor and his wife, Mountjoy decided on putting his idea to the test by applying for information to Mrs. Vimpany at her husband's house.
In the nature of a sensitive man the bare idea of delay, under these circumstances, was unendurable. Hugh called the first cab that passed him, and drove to Hampstead.
Careful—morbidly careful, perhaps—not to attract attention needlessly to himself, he stopped the cab at the entrance to Redburn Road, and approached Number Five on foot. A servant-girl answered the door. Mountjoy asked if Mrs. Vimpany was at home.
The girl made no immediate reply. She seemed to be puzzled by Mountjoy's simple question. Her familiar manner, with its vulgar assumption of equality in the presence of a stranger, revealed the London-bred maid-servant of modern times. "Did you say Mrs. Vimpany?" she inquired sharply.
"Yes."
"There's no such person here."
It was Mountjoy's turn to be puzzled. "Is this Mr. Vimpany's house?" he said.
"Yes, to be sure it is."
"And yet Mrs. Vimpany doesn't live here?"
"No Mrs. Vimpany has darkened these doors," the girl declared positively.
"Are you sure you are not making a mistake?"
"Quite sure. I have been in the doctor's service since he first took the house."
Determined to solve the mystery, if it could be done, Mountjoy asked if he could see the doctor. No: Mr. Vimpany had gone out.
"There's a young person comes to us," the servant continued. "I wonder whether you mean her, when you ask for Mrs. Vimpany? The name she gives is Henley."
"Is Miss Henley here, now?"
"You can't see her—she's engaged."
She was not engaged with Mrs. Vimpany, for no such person was known in the house. She was not engaged with the doctor, for the doctor had gone out. Mountjoy looked at the hat-stand in the passage, and discovered a man's hat and a man's greatcoat. To whom did they belong? Certainly not to Mr. Vimpany, who had gone out. Repellent as it was, Mr. Henley's idea that the explanation of his daughter's conduct was to be found in the renewed influence over her of the Irish lord, now presented itself to Hugh's mind under a new point of view. He tried in vain to resist the impression that had been produced on him. A sense of injury, which he was unable to justify to himself, took possession of him. Come what might of it, he determined to set at rest the doubts of which he was ashamed, by communicating with Iris. His card-case proved to be empty when he opened it; but there were letters in his pocket, addressed to him at his hotel in London. Removing the envelope from one of these, he handed it to the servant: "Take that to Miss Henley, and ask when I can see her."
The girl left him in the passage, and went upstairs to the drawing-room.
In the flimsily-built little house, he could hear the heavy step of a man, crossing the room above, and then the resonant tones of a man's voice raised as if in anger. Had she given him already the right to be angry with her? He thought of the time, when the betrayal of Lord Harry's vindictive purpose in leaving England had frightened her—when he had set aside his own sense of what was due to him, for her sake—and had helped her to communicate, by letter, with the man whose fatal ascendency over Iris had saddened his life. Was what he heard, now, the return that he had deserved?
After a short absence, the servant came back with a message.
"Miss Henley begs you will excuse her. She will write to you."
Would this promised letter be like the other letters which he had received from her in Scotland? Mountjoy's gentler nature reminded him that he owed it to his remembrance of happier days, and truer friendship, to wait and see.
He was just getting into the cab, on his return to London, when a closed carriage, with one person in it, passed him on its way to Redburn Road. In that person he recognised Mr. Henley. As the cab-driver mounted to his seat, Hugh saw the carriage stop at Number Five.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PARTING SCENE
THE evening had advanced, and the candles had just been lit in Mountjoy's sitting-room at the hotel.
His anxiety to hear from Iris had been doubled and trebled, since he had made the discovery of her father's visit to the doctor's house, at a time when it was impossible to doubt that Lord Harry was with her. Hugh's jealous sense of wrong was now mastered by the nobler emotions which filled him with pity and alarm, when he thought of Iris placed between the contending claims of two such men as the heartless Mr. Henley and the reckless Irish lord. He had remained at the hotel, through the long afternoon, on the chance that she might write to him speedily by the hand of a messenger—and no letter had arrived. He was still in expectation of news which might reach him by the evening post, when the waiter knocked at the door.
"A letter?" Mountjoy asked.
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br /> "No, sir," the man answered; "a lady."
Before she could raise her veil, Hugh had recognised Iris. Her manner was subdued; her face was haggard; her hand lay cold and passive in his hand, when he advanced to bid her welcome. He placed a chair for her by the fire. She thanked him and declined to take it. With the air of a woman conscious of committing an intrusion, she seated herself apart in a corner of the room.
"I have tried to write to you, and I have not been able to do it." She said that with a dogged resignation of tone and manner, so unlike herself that Mountjoy looked at her in dismay. "My friend," she went on, "your pity is all I may hope for; I am no longer worthy of the interest you once felt in me."
Hugh saw that it would be useless to remonstrate. He asked if it had been his misfortune to offend her.
"No," she said, "you have not offended me."
"Then what in Heaven's name does this change in you mean?"
"It means," she said, as coldly as ever, "that I have lost my self-respect; it means that my father has renounced me, and that you will do well to follow his example. Have I not led you to believe that I could never be the wife of Lord Harry? Well, I have deceived you—-I am going to marry him."
"I can't believe it, Iris! I won't believe it!"
She handed him the letter, in which the Irishman had declared his resolution to destroy himself. Hugh read it with contempt. "Did my lord's heart fail him?" he asked scornfully.
"He would have died by his own hand, Mr. Mountjoy——"
"Oh, Iris—'Mr.!'"
"I will say 'Hugh,' if you prefer it—but the days of our familiar friendship are none the less at an end. I found Lord Harry bleeding to death from a wound in his throat. It was in a lonely place on Hampstead Heath; I was the one person who happened to pass by it. For the third time, you see, it has been my destiny to save him. How can I forget that? My mind will dwell on it. I try to find happiness—oh, only happiness enough for me—in cheering my poor Irishman, on his way back to the life that I have preserved. There is my motive, if I have a motive. Day after day I have helped to nurse him. Day after day I have heard him say things to me—what is the use of repeating them? After years of resistance I have given way; let that be enough. My one act of discretion has been to prevent a quarrel between my father and Harry. I beg your pardon, I ought to have said Lord Harry. When my father came to the house, I insisted on speaking with him alone. I told him what I have just told you. He said: 'Think again before you make your choice between that man and me. If you decide to marry him, you will live and die without one farthing of my money to help you.' He put his watch on the table between us, and gave me five minutes to make up my mind. It was a long five minutes, but it ended at last. He asked me which he was to do—leave his will as it was, or go to his lawyer and make another. I said, 'You will do as you please, sir.' No; it was not a hasty reply—you can't make that excuse for me. I knew what I was saying; and I saw the future I was preparing for myself, as plainly as you see it—"
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