Archibald Malmaison Part 7

"Kate!"

She put out her beautiful hand, and he took it and carried it to his lips.

Thoughts fierce and sweet flew through his mind. But Mrs. Pennroyal, having gained her immediate end (which, to do her justice, was probably nothing worse than the gratification of a coquettish whim), knew how to take care of herself. She drew her hand away.

"There--well--you have been very unkind, Archibald. Have we not been friends--have we not been together from the first? How could you believe that I could wish you any harm?"

"Ah, Kate, but you married him!"

"Well, sir, I as good as asked you to marry me first, and you would not do it."

"You asked me!"

"Yes; you have forgotten. It has all been so strange, you see. I hardly know, even now, whether you are the Archibald I used to know."

"But I know, very well," returned he, grimly. "And you are the wife of my enemy, the man who is trying to ruin me. Kate," he broke off suddenly, "how did Richard know that those papers were missing in our family? I told you once--do you remember that day? And no one knew it except you."

Mrs. Pennroyal would perhaps have preferred not to be asked this question.

But since it was asked, she was bound to make the best answer she could.

"It was for that I wanted to see you to-day," she said, after a pause. "I have been to blame, Archibald; but it was ignorantly. It was long ago--before all these troubles began to occur: while we were yet on good terms. Ah me! would we were so again!"

"You told him, then?"

"I did not know that I was betraying a secret. From what Richard said, I thought that he knew it, or at least suspected it; and I merely added my confirmation. Afterward, when I found how things were going, I begged him not to use that knowledge. But it was too late. I could not be at rest until I had told you, and asked you to forgive me."

Archibald would not have believed this speech, if his head only had been concerned in the matter. Unfortunately, such was not the case. He believed it because he ardently wished to do so; and he forgave her the more easily, because that implied having her hand in his again for a few moments.

"If I could only see you and Richard at peace again, I should be happy,"

resumed Mrs. Pennroyal, with a sigh.

"Is it for him you fear, or for me?" inquired Archibald, smiling.

"The danger is yours," she answered, diplomatically.

He shook his head, still smiling: "Dismiss your anxiety, Kate. There is no danger for me or mine. Let Richard look to himself!"

Mrs. Pennroyal was startled. She had looked upon the Malmaison case as virtually hopeless. This hint of the contrary gave her a strong sensation, not altogether unpleasurable. Richard was her husband, but he was not nearly so young as Archibald, and as to looks!--there there was no comparison. Archibald was simply the finest man in England. Perhaps Mrs.

Pennroyal tad never been pa.s.sionately fond of her husband; and, on the other hand, she had certainly liked Archibald very much. In the present quarrel she had felt that the propriety of being on the winning side was not diminished by the fact that it happened to be her husband's; but if it should turn out that her husband's was not the winning side after all--then there was matter for consideration. Of course, strictly speaking, her husband's misfortunes must be her own; but in this instance the nominal misfortune would be his failure to ruin Archibald, and Mrs.

Pennroyal thought she could sustain that. No, the sensation was certainly not unpleasurable. But was it certain that Archibald was not mistaken?

"I am very glad, for both our sakes," said she, at last. "I could never have endured to take your name and estates away from you. Then that notion that the papers were lost was a mistake?"

"I can tell you nothing more," replied Archibald, looking at her.

"Ah, you have not forgiven me--you do not trust me!"

He checked his horse and hers, and turned full upon her: "Kate, you are the wife of my enemy, I must remember that! If I found you playing a double part between him and me, I should hate you more than I hate him; and then ... I should be capable of any crime. Well, I will not put it in your power. You will know all soon enough. Meantime, I trust you in this--to keep silence on what I have said to-day. Let him believe that he will succeed until he knows that he has failed. Will you promise that?"

Mrs. Pennroyal saw no harm in making this promise, but she did not see why she should not make as great a favor as she could of granting it.

"A wife should have no secrets from her husband, Archibald."

"Have you never had a secret from him, Kate?"

"You have no right to ask that!"

Archibald laughed. "Are you as happy with him as the day is long?"

She looked up for a moment, and their eyes met. "The days seem very long sometimes," she said, almost beneath her breath.

"This day?" he demanded, bending toward her.

"Autumn days are short, you know," she said, smiling a little, with averted face.

"Do you often ride out in autumn?"

"What else can I do, when my husband is away from home? I must go now--it is late."

"And your promise?"

For the third time that afternoon she gave him her hand. Her color was higher than usual, and her breathing somewhat uneven. She had not pa.s.sed unscathed through this interview. Archibald's was the stronger spirit, and she felt his power--felt it, and liked to feel it! And he, as he held her warm and delicate hand in his own, was conscious of a strange tumult in his heart. Was fate, which he had hitherto found so adverse, going to change at last, and yield him everything at once--revenge and love in the same breath? A revenge consummated through love were sweet indeed.

They parted at length, and rode away in opposite directions. This was their first meeting, but it was not their last by many.

XI.

Meanwhile the lawyers were keeping at work with commendable diligence, and Mr. Pennroyal was counting his chickens as hatched, and was as far as possible from suspecting the underplot which was going on around him. On the contrary, it seemed to him that he was becoming at last the a.s.sured favorite of fortune. For this gentleman's life had not been, in all respects, so prosperous as it appeared. To begin with, he had had a deplorable weakness for dicing and card-playing, which had frequently brought him in large sums, but which had ended by costing twenty times as much as they had won for him. He gave up these forms of diversion, therefore, and resolved to ama.s.s a fortune in a more regular manner. He studied the stock-market profoundly, until he felt himself sufficiently master of the situation, and when he entered the lists as a financier. He bought and sold, and did his very best to buy cheap and to sell dear. He made several lucky hits; but in the long run he found that the balance was setting steadily against him. All his ready money was gone, and mortgages began to settle down like birds of ill-omen upon his house and lands. It was at this period that he married Kate Battledown; and with the money that she brought him he began to retrieve his losses, and again the horizon brightened. Alas! the improvement was only temporary. Ill-luck set in once more, and more inveterately than ever. Kate's good money went after his bad money, and neither returned. A good deal of it is said to have found its way into the pockets of Major Bolingbroke, his second in the duel. The ill-omened birds settled down once more, until they covered the roof and disfigured all the landscape.

To add to his troubles, he did not find that comfort and consolation in his matrimonial relations which he would fain have had. It is true that he married his wife first of all for her money; but he was far from insensible to her other attractions, and, so far from wearying of them, they took a stronger and stronger hold upon him, until this cold, sarcastic, and unsocial man grew to be nothing less than uxorious. But his wife recompensed his devotion but shabbily; her position had not fulfilled her antic.i.p.ations, she was angry at the loss of her money, and upon the whole she repented having taken an irrevocable step too hastily. She felt herself to be the intellectual equal of her husband, and she was not long in improving the advantage she possessed of not caring anything about him.

In a word, she bullied the unfortunate gentleman unmercifully, and he kissed the rod with infatuation.

This state of things was in force up to the time of Mrs. Pennroyal's meeting with Archibald, as above described. After that there was a marked and most enchanting alteration in Mrs. Pennroyal's demeanor toward her husband. She became all at once affectionate and sympathetic. She flattered him, she deferred to him, she consulted him, and drew him on with delicate encouragements to consult her, to confide in her all the private details of his affairs, which he had never done before, and to intrust to her safekeeping every inmost fear and aspiration of his mind.

At every point she met him with soothing agreement and ingenuous suggestion; and in particular did she echo and foster his enmity against Sir Archibald Malmaison, and urged him forward in his suit, bidding him spare no expense, since success was a.s.sured, and affirming her readiness to mortgage her very jewels, if need were, to pay the eminent legal gentlemen who were to conduct the case.

This behavior of hers afforded her husband especial gratification, for he had always been a little jealous of Sir Archibald, and indeed one of the impelling motives to the present action had been a desire to pay his grudge in this respect. But the discovery that Mrs. Pennroyal hated the young baronet quite as much as he did, filled his soul with balm; so that it only needed the successful termination of the lawsuit to render his bliss complete and overflowing.

Well, the great case came on; and all the n.o.bility and gentry of the three counties, and others besides, were there to see and hear. There were bets that the trial would not be over in seven days, and odds were taken against its lasting seven weeks. Society forgot its ennui and settled itself complacently to listen to a piquant story of scandal, intrigue, imposition, and robbery in high life.

The reader knows the sequel. Never was there such a disappointment. The learned brethren of the law opened their mouths only to shut them again.

For after the famous Mr. Adolphus, counsel for the plaintiff, had eloquently and ingeniously stated his case and given a picturesque and appetizing outline of the evidence that he was going to call, and the facts that he was going to prove; after this preliminary flourish was over, behold, up got Mr. Sergeant Runnington, who appeared on behalf of the defendant, and let fall some remarks which, though given in a sufficiently matter-of-fact and every-day tone, fell like a thunder-clap upon the ears of all present, save two persons; and produced upon the Honorable Richard Pennroyal an effect as if a hand-grenade had been let off within his head, and his spine drawn neatly out through the back of his neck.

I cannot give the learned Sergeant's speech here, but the upshot of it was that the plaintiff had no case; inasmuch as he relied, to make good his claim, on the absence of any direct evidence establishing the ident.i.ty of the late Sir Clarence b.u.t.t Malmaison, and the decease of that illegitimate personage whom the plaintiffs sought to confound with him.