Part 79 (2/2)
”Well,” said he at length, dissimulating his repugnance, and with an effort at his old half-coaxing, half-rollicking tones, ”you certainly are the best of creatures; and, as you say,
'Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne'er could injure you,'
ungrateful dog though I may seem, and very likely am. I own I have a horror of Australasia--such a long sea-voyage! New scenes no longer attract me; I am no longer young, though I ought to be; but if you insist on it, and will really condescend to accompany me in spite of all my sins to you, why, I can make up my mind. And as to honesty, ask those infernal rascals, who, you say, would swear away my life, and they will tell you that I have been as innocent as a lamb since my return to England; and that is my guilt in their villanous eyes. As long as that infamous Poole gave me enough for my humble wants, I was a reformed man.
I wish to keep reformed. Very little suffices for me now. As you say, Australasia may be the best place for me. When shall we go?”
”Are you serious?”
”To be sure.”
”Then I will inquire the days on which the vessels sail. You can call on me at my own old home, and all shall be arranged. Oh, Jasper Losely, do not avoid this last chance of escape from the perils that gather round you.”
”No; I am sick of life--of all things except repose. Arabella, I suffer horrible pain.”
He groaned, for he spoke truly. At that moment the gnaw of the monster anguish, which fastens on the nerves like a wolf's tooth, was so keen that he longed to swell his groan into a roar. The old fable of Hercules in the poisoned tunic was surely invented by some skilled physiologist, to denote the truth that it is only in the strongest frames that pain can be pushed into its extremest torture. The heart of the grim woman was instantly and thoroughly softened. She paused; she made him lean on her arm; she wiped the drops from his brow; she addressed him in the most soothing tones of pity. The spasm pa.s.sed away suddenly as it does in neuralgic agonies, and with it any grat.i.tude or any remorse in the breast of the sufferer.
”Yes,” he said, ”I will call on you; but meanwhile I am without a farthing. Oh, do not fear that if you helped me now, I should again shun you. I have no other resource left; nor have I now the spirit I once had. I no longer now laugh at fatigue and danger.”
”But will you swear by all that you yet hold sacred--if, alas! there be aught which is sacred to you--that you will not again seek the company of those men who are conspiring to entrap you into the hangman's hands?”
”Seek them again, the ungrateful cowardly blackguards! No, no; I promise you that--solemnly; it is medical aid that I want; it is rest, I tell you--rest, rest, rest.” Arabella Crane drew forth her purse. ”Take what you will,” said she gently. Jasper, whether from the desire to deceive her, or because her alms were so really distasteful to his strange kind of pride that he stinted to bare necessity the appeal to them, contented himself with the third or fourth of the sovereigns that the purse contained, and after a few words of thanks and promises, he left her side, and soon vanished in the fog that grew darker and darker as the night-like wintry day deepened over the silenced thoroughfares.
The woman went her way through the mists, hopeful--through the mists went the man, hopeful also. Recruiting himself by slight food and strong drink at a tavern on his road, he stalked on to Darrell's house in Carlton Gardens; and, learning there that Darrell was at Fawley, hastened to the station from which started the train to the town nearest to the old Manor-house; reached that town safely, and there rested for the night.
BOOK IX.
CHAPTER I.
THE SECRET WHICH GUY DARRELL DID NOT CONFIDE TO ALBAN MORLEY.
It was a serene noonday in that melancholy interlude of the seasons when autumn has really ceased--winter not yet visibly begun. The same hired vehicle which had borne Lionel to Fawley more than five years ago, stopped at the gate of the wild umbrageous gra.s.s-land that surrounded the antique Manor-house. It had been engaged, from the nearest railway-station on the London road, by a lady, with a female companion who seemed her servant. The driver dismounted, opened the door of the vehicle, and the lady bidding him wait there till her return, and saying a few words to her companion, descended, and, drawing her cloak round her, walked on alone towards the Manor-house. At first her step was firm, and her pace quick. She was still under the excitement of the resolve in which the journey from her home had been suddenly conceived and promptly accomplished. But as the path wound on through the stillness of venerable groves, her courage began to fail her. Her feet loitered, her eyes wandered round vaguely, timidly. The scene was not new to her. As she gazed, rus.h.i.+ngly gathered over her sorrowful shrinking mind memories of sportive happy summer days, spent in childhood amidst those turfs and shades-memories, more agitating, of the last visit (childhood then ripened into blooming youth) to the ancient dwelling which, yet concealed from view by the swells of the undulating ground and the yellow boughs of the giant trees, betrayed its site by the smoke rising thin and dim against the limpid atmosphere. She bent down her head, closing her eyes as if to shut out less the face of the landscape than the images that rose ghost-like up to people it, and sighed heavily, heavily. Now, hard by, roused from its bed amongst the fern, the doe that Darrell had tained into companions.h.i.+p had watched with curiosity this strange intruder on its solitary range. But at the sound of that heavy sigh, the creature, emboldened, left its halting-place, and stole close to the saddened woman, touching her very dress. Doubtless, as Darrell's companion in his most musing hours, the doe was familiarised to the sound of sighs, and a.s.sociated the sound with its gentlest notions of humanity.
The lady, starting, raised her drooping lids, and met those soft dark eyes, dark and soft as her own. Round the animal's neck there was a simple collar, with a silver plate, fresh and new, evidently placed there recently; and as the creature thrust forward its head, as if for the caress of a wonted hand, the lady read the inscription. The words were in Italian, and may be construed thus: ”Female, yet not faithless; fostered, yet not ungrateful.” As she read, her heart so swelled, and her resolve so deserted her, that she turned as if she had received a sentence of dismissal, and went back some hasty paces. The doe followed her till she paused again, and then it went slowly down a narrow path to the left, which led to the banks of the little lake.
The lady had now recovered herself. ”It is a duty, and it must be done,”
she muttered, and letting clown the veil she had raised on entering the demesne, she hurried on, not retracing her steps in the same path, but taking that into which the doe had stricken, perhaps in the confused mistake of a mind absorbed and absent-perhaps in revived recollection of the localities, for the way thus to the house was shorter than by the weed-grown carriage-road. The lake came in view, serene and gla.s.sy; half-leafless woodlands reflected far upon its quiet waters; the doe halted, lifted its head, and sniffed the air, and, somewhat quickening its pace, vanished behind one of the hillocks clothed with brushwood, that gave so primitive and forest-like a character to the old ground.
Advancing still, there now,--at her right hand, grew out of the landscape the n.o.ble turrets of the unfinished pile; and, close at her left, under a gnarled fantastic thorn-tree, the still lake at his feet reflecting his stiller shadow, reclined Guy Darrell, the doe nestled at his side.
So unexpected this sight--he, whom she came to seek yet feared to see, so close upon her way--the lady uttered a faint but sharp cry, and Darrell sprang to his feet. She stood before him, veiled, mantled, bending as a suppliant.
”Avaunt!” he faltered wildly. ”Is this a spirit my own black solitude conjures up--or is it a delusion, a dream? It is I--I!--the Caroline dear to you once, if detested now! Forgive me! Not for myself I come.”
She flung back her veil-her eyes pleadingly sought his.
”So,” said Darrell, gathering his arms round his breast in the gesture peculiar to him when seeking either to calm a more turbulent movement, or to confirm a sterner resolution of his heart--”so! Caroline, Marchioness of Montfort, we are then fated to meet face to face at last!
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