Part 3 (1/2)

'We shall be safe at home before noon to-morrow, and you can have Horton to set you right again. You know you always believed in his skill.'

'Horton is a clever fellow enough, as country doctors go; but at Hastings I could have had the best physicians in London to see me,'

grumbled his lords.h.i.+p.

The rustic maid-servant came in to lay the table, a.s.sisted by her ladys.h.i.+p's footman, who looked a good deal too tall for the room.

'I shan't dine,' said the Earl. 'I am a great deal too ill and cold.

Light a fire in my room, girl, and send Steadman to me'--this to the footman, who hastened to obey. 'You can send me up a basin of soup presently. I shall go to bed at once.'

He left the room without another word to his wife, who sat by the hearth staring thoughtfully at the cheery wood fire. Presently she looked up, and saw that the man and maid were going on with their preparations for dinner.

'I do not care about dining alone,' said her ladys.h.i.+p. 'We lunched at Windermere, and I have no appet.i.te. You can clear away those things, and bring me some tea.'

When the table furniture had been cleared, and a neat little tea-tray set upon the white cloth, Lady Maulevrier drew her chair to the table, and took out her pocket-book, from which she produced a letter. This she read more than once, meditating profoundly upon its contents.

'I am very sorry he has come home,' wrote her correspondent, 'and yet if he had stayed in India there must have been an investigation on the spot. A public inquiry is inevitable, and the knowledge of his arrival in the country will precipitate matters. From all I hear I much fear that there is no chance of the result being favourable to him. You have asked me to write the unvarnished truth, to be brutal even, remember.

His delinquencies are painfully notorious, and I apprehend that the last sixpence he owns will be answerable. His landed estate I am told can also be confiscated, in the event of an impeachment at the bar of the House of Lords, as in the Warren Hastings case. But as yet n.o.body seems clear as to the form which the investigation will take. In reply to your inquiry as to what would have happened if his lords.h.i.+p had died on the pa.s.sage home, I believe I am justified in saying the scandal would have been allowed to die with him. He has contrived to provoke powerful animosities both in the Cabinet and at the India House, and there is, I fear, an intention to pursue the inquiry to the bitter end.'

a.s.surances of the writer's sympathy followed these harsh truths. But to this polite commonplace her ladys.h.i.+p paid no attention. Her mind was intent on hard facts, the dismal probabilities of the near future.

'If he had died upon the pa.s.sage home!' she repeated. 'Would to G.o.d that he had so died, and that my son's name and fortune could be saved.'

The innocent child who had never given her an hour's care; the one creature she loved with all the strength of her proud nature--his future was to be blighted by his father's misdoings-overshadowed by shame and dishonour in the very dawn of life. It was a wicked wish--an unnatural wish to find room in a woman's breast; but the wish was there. Would to G.o.d he had died before the s.h.i.+p touched an English port.

But he was living, and would have to face his accusers--and she, his wife, must give him all the help she could.

She sat long by the waning fire. She took nothing but a cup of tea, although the landlady had sent in substantial accompaniments to the tea-tray in the shape of broiled ham, new-laid eggs, and hot cakes, arguing that a traveller on such a night must be hungry, albeit disinclined for a ceremonious dinner. She had been sitting for nearly an hour in almost the same att.i.tude, when there came a knock at the door, and, on being bidden to enter, the landlady came in, with some logs in her ap.r.o.n, under pretence of replenis.h.i.+ng the fire.

'I was afraid your fire must be getting low, and that you'd be amost starved, my lady,' she said, as she put on the logs, and swept up the ashes on the hearth. 'Such a dreadful night. So early in the year, too.

I'm thinking we shall have a gay hard winter.'

'That does not always follow,' said Lady Maulevrier. 'Has Steadman come downstairs?'

'Yes, my lady. He told me to tell your ladys.h.i.+p that his lords.h.i.+p is pretty comfortable, and hopes to pa.s.s a good night.'

'I am glad to hear it. You can give me another room, I suppose. It would be better for his lords.h.i.+p not to be disturbed, as he is very much out of health.'

'There is another room, my lady, but it's very small.'

'I don't mind how small, if it is clean and airy.'

'Yes, my lady. I am thankful to say you won't find dirt or stuffiness anywhere in this house. His lords.h.i.+p do look mortal badly,' added the landlady, shaking her head dolefully; 'and I remember him such a fine young gentleman, when he used to come down the Rothay with the otter hounds, running along the bank--joomping in and out of the beck--up to his knees in the water--and now to see him, so white and mas.h.i.+ated, and broken-down like, in the very prime of life, all along of living out in a hot country, among blackamoors, which is used to it--poor, ignorant creatures--and never knew no better. It must be a hard trial for you, my lady.'

'It is a hard trial.'

'Ah! we all have our trials, rich and poor,' sighed the woman, who desired nothing better than to be allowed to unbosom her woes to the grand looking lady in the fur-bordered cloth pelisse, with beautiful dark hair piled up in cl.u.s.tering ma.s.ses above a broad white forehead, and slender white hands on which diamonds flashed and glittered in the firelight, an unaccustomed figure by that rustic hearth.