Part 23 (1/2)

Afterwards, before the trial, the Prince told Logan how matters had befallen. 'I was wakened,' he said--'you were very late, you know, and we had all gone to bed--I was wakened by a banging door. If you remember, I told you all, on the night of your arrival at Rookchester, how I hated that sound. I tried not to think of it, and was falling asleep when it banged again--a double knock. I was nearly asleep, when it clashed again. There was no wind, my window was open and I looked out: I only heard the river murmuring and the whistle of a pa.s.sing train.

The stillness made the abominable recurrent noise more extraordinary. I dressed in a moment in my smoking-clothes, lit a candle, and went out of my room, listening. I walked along the gallery--'

'It was your candle that I saw as I crossed the lawn,' said Logan.

'When a door opened,' the Prince went on--'the door of one of the rooms on the landing--and a figure, all in white,--it was Scremerston,--emerged and disappeared down the stairs. I followed at the top of my speed. I heard a shot, or rather two pistols that rang out together like one. I ran through the hall into the long back pa.s.sage at right-angles to it, down the pa.s.sage to the glimmer of light through the partly glazed door at the end of it. Then my candle was blown out and three men set on me.

They had nearly pinioned me when you and Fenwick took them on both flanks. You know the rest. They had the boat unmoored, a light cart ready on the other side, and a steam-yacht lying off Warkworth. The object, of course, was to kidnap me, and coerce or torture me into renewing the lease of the tables at Scalastro. Poor Scremerston, who was a few seconds ahead of me, not carrying a candle, had fired in the dark, and missed. The answering fire, which was simultaneous, killed him. The shots saved me, for they brought you and Fenwick to the rescue. Two of the fellows whom we damaged were--'

'The Genoese pipers, of course,' said Logan.

'And you guessed, from the cry you gave, who my confessor (_he_ banged the door, of course to draw me) turned out to be?'

'Yes, the head croupier at Scalastro years ago; but he wore a beard and blue spectacles in the old time, when he raked in a good deal of my patrimony,' said Logan. 'But how was he planted on _you_?'

'My old friend, Father Costa, had died, and it is too long a tale of forgery and fraud to tell you how this wretch was forced on me. He _had_ been a Jesuit, but was unfrocked and expelled from Society for all sorts of namable and unnamable offences. His community believed that he was dead. So he fell to the profession in which you saw him, and, when the gambling company saw that I was disinclined to let that h.e.l.l burn any longer on my rock, ingenious treachery did the rest.'

'By Jove!' said Logan.

The Prince of Scalastro, impoverished by his own generous impulse, now holds high rank in the j.a.panese service. His beautiful wife is much admired in Yokohama.

The Earl was nursed through the long and dangerous illness which followed the shock of that dreadful July night, by the unwearying a.s.siduity of his kinswoman, Miss Willoughby. On his recovery, the bride (for the Earl won her heart and hand) who stood by him at the altar looked fainter and more ghostly than the bridegroom. But her dark hour of levity was pa.s.sed and over. There is no more affectionate pair than the Earl and Countess of Embleton. Lady Mary, who lives with them, is once more an aunt, and spoils, it is to be feared, the young Viscount Scremerston, a fine but mischievous little boy. On the fate of the ex-Jesuit we do not dwell: enough to say that his punishment was decreed by the laws of our country, not of that which he had disgraced.

The ma.n.u.scripts of the Earl have been edited by him and the Countess for the Roxburghe Club.

VIII. THE ADVENTURE OF THE LADY PATRONESS

'I cannot bring myself to refuse my a.s.sent. It would break the dear child's heart. She has never cared for anyone else, and, oh, she is quite wrapped up in him. I have heard of your wonderful cures, Mr.

Merton, I mean successes, in cases which everyone has given up, and though it seems a very strange step to me, I thought that I ought to shrink from no remedy'--

'However unconventional,' said Merton, smiling. He felt rather as if he were being treated like a quack doctor, to whom people (if foolish enough) appeal only as the last desperate resource.

The lady who filled, and amply filled, the client's chair, Mrs. Malory, of Upwold in Yorks.h.i.+re, was a widow, obviously, a widow indeed. 'In weed' was an unworthy _calembour_ which flashed through Merton's mind, since Mrs. Malory's undying regret for her lord (a most estimable man for a coal owner) was explicitly declared, or rather was blazoned abroad, in her costume. Mrs. Mallory, in fact, was what is derisively styled 'Early Victorian'--'Middle' would have been, historically, more accurate. Her religion was mildly Evangelical; she had been brought up on the Memoirs of the Fairchild Family, by Mrs. Sherwood, tempered by Miss Yonge and the Waverley Novels. On these principles she had trained her family. The result was that her sons had not yet brought the family library, and the family Romneys and Hoppners, to Christie's. Not one of them was a director of any company, and the name of Malory had not yet been distinguished by decorating the annals of the Courts of Bankruptcy or of Divorce. In short, a family more deplorably not 'up to date,' and more 'out of the swim' could scarcely be found in England.

Such, and of such connections, was the lady, fair, faded, with mildly aquiline features, and an aspect at once distinguished and dowdy, who appealed to Merton. She sought him in what she, at least, regarded as the interests of her eldest daughter, an heiress under the will of a maternal uncle. Merton had met the young lady, who looked like a portrait of her mother in youth. He knew that Miss Malory, now 'wrapped up in' her betrothed lover, would, in a few years, be equally absorbed in 'her boys.' She was pretty, blonde, dull, good, and cast by Providence for the part of one of the best of mothers, and the despair of what man soever happened to sit next her at a dinner party. Such women are the safeguards of society--though sneered at by the frivolous as 'British Matrons.'

'I have laid the case before the--where I always take my troubles,' said Mrs. Malory, 'and I have not felt restrained from coming to consult you.

When I permitted my daughter's engagement (of course after carefully examining the young man's worldly position) I was not aware of what I know now. Matilda met him at a visit to some neighbours--he really is very attractive, and very attentive--and it was not till we came to London for the season that I heard the stories about him. Some of them have been pointed out to me, in print, in the dreadful French newspapers, others came to me in anonymous letters. As far as a mother may, I tried to warn Matilda, but there are subjects on which one can hardly speak to a girl. The Vidame, in fact,' said Mrs. Malory, blus.h.i.+ng, 'is celebrated--I should say infamous--both in France and Italy, Poland too, as what they call _un homme aux bonnes fortunes_. He has caused the break-up of several families. Mr. Merton, he is a rake,' whispered the lady, in some confusion.

'He is still young; he may reform,' said Merton, 'and no doubt a pure affection will be the saving of him.'

'So Matilda believes, but, though a Protestant--his ancestors having left France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nancy--Nantes I mean--I am certain that he is _not_ under conviction.'

'Why does he call himself Vidame, ”the Vidame de la Lain”?' asked Merton.

'It is an affectation,' said Mrs. Malory. 'None of his family used the t.i.tle in England, but he has been much on the Continent, and has lands in France; and, I suppose, has romantic ideas. He is as much French as English, more I am afraid. The wickedness of that country! And I fear it has affected ours. Even now--I am not a scandal-monger, and I hope for the best--but even last winter he was talked about,' Mrs. Malory dropped her voice, 'with a lady whose husband is in America, Mrs. Brown- Smith.'