Part 14 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVIII.
”He has mounted her on a milk-white steed, Himself on a dappled gray; And a bugelet-horn hung down by his side As lightly they rode away.”
It is hard to describe the terrible _prestige_ which, after the event I have been speaking of, attached itself to Ralph Mohun. As for attempting a second attack on the fatal house, the peasantry would as soon have thought of storming the bottomless pit. They did not even try a shot at him from behind a wall; considering him perfectly invulnerable, they deemed it a pity to waste good powder and lead that might be usefully employed on an agent or process server. As his gaunt, erect figure went by, the men shrunk out of his path, and the women called their children in hastily, and shut their cabin doors; the very beggars, who are tolerably unscrupulous, gave his gate a wide berth, crossing themselves, with a muttered prayer, ”G.o.d stand betwixt us and harm.” If Ralph perceived this, I think he rather liked it; at all events, he made no attempt, either by softening his manner or by any act of benevolence, to win the popular favor.
Before going to the Lodge I had heard from Livingstone. He said that his cousin's affair with Charley was progressing satisfactorily (I knew what that meant), and that he was going himself to sell out. I was not surprised at this; for some time past even the light restraint of service in the Household Brigade had begun to bore him. But the intelligence conveyed in a brief note from him during my stay with Mohun startled me very much. It announced, without any preface or explanation, that he was engaged to Constance Brandon.
I had observed that lately he never mentioned or alluded to Miss Bellasys, but he had been equally silent about his present betrothed. I told my host of the news directly.
”I am very glad to hear it,” he said. ”I never heard any thing but good of his _fiancee_. She is wonderfully beautiful, too, I believe, and her blood is unexceptionable. And yet,” he went on musingly, ”I should hardly have fancied that she would quite suit Guy. I don't know any one who would exactly. By-the-by, was there not a strong flirtation with a Miss Bellasys?”
”Yes; so strong that I should have been less surprised to have seen her name in this letter.”
”Then he has not got out of that sc.r.a.pe yet,” Mohun observed. ”That girl comes of the wrong stock to give up any thing she has fancied without a struggle. I knew her father, d.i.c.k Bellasys, well. He contrived to compress as much mischief into his five-and-thirty years, before De Launy shot him, as most strong men can manage in double the time. He was like the Visconti--never sparing man in his anger, or woman in his love.”
I felt that he was right. I did not fancy the idea of Flora's state of mind when she heard that all her fascinations had failed, and that her rival had won the day.
”I think I must leave you sooner than I had intended,” I said; ”I should like to be in England to see how things are going on.”
”You are right,” answered Ralph, ”though I shall be sorry to lose you.
You have some influence with Livingstone, I know, though he is so hard to guide and self-reliant that advice is almost useless. If I had to give you a _consigne_, it would be--Distrust. If Miss Bellasys seems to take things pleasantly, be still more wary. I never saw a peculiarly frank, winning smile on her father's face without there being ruin to some one in the background. After all, you can do but little, I suppose.
_Che sara, sara_.” He said this drearily, and with something like a sigh.
I had some business which detained me in Dublin, and it was nearly a fortnight after I received Guy's letter before I reached London.
Early on the morning after my arrival I went down to his lodgings in Piccadilly. I found him at breakfast; after the first greetings, before I could say one word about his own affairs, he began to speak eagerly.
”What a pity you should have come too late for the catastrophe, when you had seen all the preface! Five days ago Bella and Charley made their great _coup_, and were married in Paris.”
”And Bruce?” I said, recovering from the intelligence, which was not so unexpected, after all.
”Ah! Bruce”--Guy replied; ”I should be very glad if I knew what he _was_ doing at this moment. I have been expecting him every day; but nothing has been heard of him since he left my mother's presence in a rabid state of fury. Did I tell you it was from Kerton they fled? I thought he must have come to me for an explanation, knowing that I was an accessory before the fact. Indeed, I lent Charley the sinews of war in the shape of a blank check, which I see this morning he has filled up for a thousand--just like his modesty. Well, I hope they'll amuse themselves! Bruce has never been near me. Suicide is the most charitable suggestion I've heard yet; but coroners are silent, and the Thames, if it is conscious of that unlucky though disagreeable man, keeps his secret so far!”
Then he went on to give me more particulars of the _escapade_. It seems that Miss Raymond had gone out to walk alone, after luncheon, and that nothing more was heard of her till dinner-time, when a note was found on her dressing-table, addressed to her aunt, containing the intelligence of her flight with Forrester, and a little piece of ready-made penitence--the first for all whom it might concern, the second for her father.
That placid Lord Ullin received the news by telegraph when he was well into his second rubber at the ”Travelers;” he put the message into his pocket without remark, and won the rubber before he rose. It has been reported that he was somewhat absent during its progress, so much so as to rough his partner's strongest suit; but this I conceive to have been an after-thought of some one's, or a _canard_ of the club. Impavid as the Horatian model-man--(just in all his _dealings_, and tenacious of the odd trick)--I can not imagine the convulsion of nature which would have made him jeopardize by any sin of omission or commission the winning of the long odds.
He found Bruce that night, and told him all. He never would give an account of that interview: it must have been a curious one.
_”xunomosan gar, ontes echtistoi to prin, pur kai thala.s.sa--”_
Fancy the well-iced conventionalities of the one brought in contact with the other's savage temperament, maddened by baffled desires and the sense of shameful defeat.
Before noon the next day it was announced to Lady Catharine, at Kerton Manor, that Bruce was waiting for her in the drawing-room. It was with a diffidence and sense of guilt very strange to her pure, straightforward nature that she obeyed the summons.
His back was to the door as she entered.
”I can not tell you how sorry I am,” she began.
Bruce turned toward her his ghastly face, ravaged and deformed by pa.s.sion and sleeplessness, like a cane-brake in the Western Indies over which a tornado has pa.s.sed. He did not appear to notice her words or her offered hand, but spoke in a strange, broken voice, after clearing his parched throat once or twice, huskily: