Volume Iii Part 2 (2/2)

”Gad, they write me that she drew out the last farthing she had in the world two months ago. And that woman Fanchette, who is a very bad lot indeed, or I'm very much, mistaken, told me she p.a.w.ned her earrings the day before she--died.”

Georgie nodded. ”I remember them, a pair of large single-stone earrings.

I fancy she must have bought them when she first came into her property.

I saw them quite by chance last summer, for the first time; and when I admired them, she said that she had had them for years, that they had been her first folly and had cost her dear.”

”Well, here they are at any rate,” said Haggard; ”she p.a.w.ned them for seven thousand francs, and I redeemed them after a lot of bother. And that's all that remains. She had spent or gambled away every farthing of the rest. I don't know whether I ought to tell you, Georgie,” he continued in a softer tone.

”Tell me, Reginald, tell me what? Did you know?” and the light of love came back into Georgie Haggard's eyes, as she thought that perhaps her careless heartless husband had, from a wish to s.h.i.+eld her cousin's honour, silently and deliberately allowed poor Lucy's b.a.s.t.a.r.d child to be fathered upon him. But the light quickly faded, and the eyes were suffused with tears, as her husband answered coa.r.s.ely:

”Did I know what? I know this--she poisoned herself, there's not a doubt of that.”

And then, without the slightest attempt to soften the ghastly details, he brutally told his wife the particulars of her cousin's end.

”They manage these things much better there than here,” he said. ”Twelve Tom Fools are not called upon to sit in one's dining room and give their opinion. The Commissary of Police had the whole matter cut and dried. I saw the official doctor too--a hungry fellow that. Of course I had to bribe the pair of them. Lucy Warrender poisoned herself, Georgie. She did it artfully enough, with chloral. Why, they showed me the bottle; she had swallowed enough to kill half-a-dozen women. What a fool she was, when one comes to think of it! Why, she could have married well any number of times, if she'd liked; she could have had Spunyarn years and years ago, if she had chosen to lift her finger. What a fool she was!”

Yes, that was her epitaph: ”What a fool she was!” You couldn't have put it more tersely and more truly, Reginald Haggard. What a thoughtless wicked fool she had been; she had wrecked her own life and her cousin's by her wicked folly. ”What a fool she was!”

I verily believe that if Haggard had shown one spark of feeling in the matter of poor Lucy's death, his wife would have spoken, after a silence of twenty years; but his last words had checked the impulse, and Georgie merely nodded, while the tears rolled down her cheeks, as she silently accepted the justice of her husband's verdict.

As she sat and pondered over her cousin's sorry ending, she felt that the least she could do for the dead girl was still to jealously guard her miserable secret.

While the elders were talking, the two young men were walking in the great avenue that for nearly half a mile runs from the princ.i.p.al entrance of the park to the big hall door of Walls End Castle. Lucius had much to tell; he was full of the journey, and he went over all the details of the funeral to the younger man.

”Battling good place, that Hotel de Russie; they gave us an uncommonly good dinner, and ortolans. I didn't think much of them, but the governor was very enthusiastic, and ordered them again for breakfast. By Jove!

George,” continued the young fellow, ”he's so fond of them that I believe if mother, or even I, were to die to-morrow, the governor would order ortolans for breakfast if he could get them. I say, George,” he added, ”I'm in funds, and I don't mind doing the generous thing, if you like. I know you're hard up--beastly hard up--you always are. I'll make you a present of a pony, George.”

Young George Haggard smiled, and took the five-and-twenty pounds, in crisp bank notes, which his father's heir produced from his waistcoat pocket. ”I'll take it as a loan, Lucius,” he said with a little laugh, ”to be repaid when I become Lord Chancellor.”

”All right, my boy,” said the other. ”Now if you can keep a secret, I'll tell you how I got it.” And then he went off into a long description of the great Temple of Fortune on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. How he had retired early, on the plea of fatigue; how he had escaped undiscovered to the Rooms; how he had backed his luck and won his money.

”Eighty pounds wasn't bad for a first attempt, you know,” he said. ”I saw old Pepper,” he continued, ”in the thick of it; but I had to keep dark, you know, for I shouldn't have cared for the old boy to see me there.”

George still held his brother's welcome present in his hand, and the boy twisted the notes nervously in his fingers. He hesitated, but not for long.

”Don't be offended, Lucius,” he said; ”I think I'd rather not take it, if you don't mind.”

”As you please, my boy,” said the other, holding out his hand willingly enough. ”As they say in the schools, _Non olet_.”

”It does to me, Lucius--it does to me.”

The young men continued their walk up and down the great aisle of old beech trees, and Lucius returned to his ecstatic description of the scene in the Halls of Dazzling Delight; but I don't think the other young fellow heard him, for he was thinking of the dead woman who was sleeping in her lonely grave.

Lucky Lucy! dead a week, and you have two human beings who still mourn your loss.

”I always thought you were a fool, George; but you really are a bigger fool than even I ever took you to be. I actually hand you five-and-twenty pounds, which you decline with thanks. I don't understand you, George. You neglect your opportunities. Why don't you make up to the old man, or cultivate a taste for art, as I do; I mean to make art pay, my boy.”

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