Brooke's Daughter Part 56

He was aroused from the reverie into which he had fallen by the entry of a servant with a note. He opened it, read the contents slowly, and then put it into the fire. He stood frowning a little as he watched it burn.

After a few moments of this hesitation he rang the bell, told Sarah that he was going out, and left the house. The three women in the drawing-room upstairs, already nervous and overstrained from long suspense, all started when the reverberation of that closing door made itself heard. Lesley felt her mother's hand close on hers with a quick, convulsive pressure. She looked up.

"He has gone out!" Lady Alice murmured, so that Lesley alone could hear.

"He does not come--to _us_!"

Lesley did not know what to say. She was surprised to find that her mother expected him to come. But then she was only Caspar Brooke's daughter and not his wife.

Lady Alice lay back in her chair, closed her eyes and waited. She had once been a jealous woman: there were the seeds of jealousy in her still. She sat and wondered whether Caspar had gone for sympathy and comfort to any other woman. And after wondering this for half an hour it suddenly occurred to her mind with the vividness of a lightning flash that if things _were_ so--if her husband _had_ found sympathy elsewhere--it was her own fault. She had no right to accuse him, or to blame him, when she had left him for a dozen years.

"I have no right to blame him, perhaps, but I have still a right to know," she said to herself. And then, disengaging her hand from Lesley's clinging fingers, she rose and went downstairs--down to the study which she had so seldom visited. She seated herself in Caspar's arm-chair, and prepared to wait there for his return. Surely he would not be long!--and then she would speak to him, and things should be made clear.

Caspar's note had been written by Mrs. Romaine. It was quite formal, and merely contained a request that he would call on her at his earliest convenience. And he complied at once, as she had surmised that he would do. Her confidential maid opened the door to him, and conducted him to the drawing-room. It was dusk, and the blinds were drawn down. Oliver Trent's funeral had taken place the day before.

Mr. Brooke did not sit down. He knew that the interview which was about to take place was likely to be a painful one, but he could not guess in the least what kind of turn it would take. Did Rosalind believe in his guilt? Did she know what manner of man her brother Oliver had been? Was she going to reproach or to condole? She had done a strange thing in asking him to the house at all, and at another time he might have thought it wiser not to accede to her request; but he was in the mood in which the most extraordinary incidents seem possible, and scarcely anything could have seemed to him too bizarre to happen. He felt curiously impatient of the ordinary conventionalities of civilized life.

Since this miraculous thing had come to pa.s.s--that he, Caspar Brooke, a respectable, sane, healthy-minded man of middle-age, could be accused of killing a miserable young scamp like Oliver Trent in a moment of pa.s.sion--the world had certainly seemed somewhat crazy and out of joint.

It was not worth while to stand very much on ceremony at such a conjuncture; and if Rosalind Romaine wanted to talk to him about her dead brother, he was willing to go and hear her talk. And yet as he stood in her dainty little drawing-room, it came over him very strongly that he ought not to be there.

He was still musing when the door opened, and Rosalind stole into the room. He did not hear her until she was close upon him, and then he turned with a sudden start. She looked different--she was changed. Her face was very pale: her eyelids were reddened: she was dressed in the deepest black, and over her head she had flung a black lace veil, which gave her--perhaps unintentionally--a tragic look. She held the folds together with her right hand, and spoke to him quietly.

"It was kind of you to come," she said.

"You summoned me. I should not have come without that," he answered, quickly.

"No, I suppose not. And of course--in the ordinary course of things--I ought not to have summoned you. The world would say that I was wrong.

But we have been old friends for many years now, have we not?"

"I always thought so," he answered, gravely. "But now--I fear----"

"You mean"--with a strange vibration in her voice--"you mean that we must never be friends again--because--because of Oliver----"

"This accusation must naturally tend to separate the families," he said, in a very calm, grave voice. "Even when it is disproved, we shall not find it easy to resume old relations. I am very sorry for it, Rosalind, just as I need not tell you how sorry I am for the cause----"

She interrupted him hurriedly. "Yes, yes, I know all that; but you speak of _disproving_ the charge. Can you do that?"

He was silent for a moment. "I shall do my best," he said at length, with some emotion in his voice.

"And if it is not disproved--what then?" she asked. "Suppose they call it _murder_?"

Caspar drew himself up: a certain displeasure began to mark itself upon his features.

"Need you ask me?"

"Yes, I need. I want you to consider the answer that you would give. I have a reason."

Her eager eyes, hot and burning in a face that was strangely white, pled for her. Caspar relented a little, but bent his brows as he replied--

"The extreme penalty of the law, I suppose. It is absurd--but, of course, it is possible. It is not a case in which I should expect penal servitude for life to be subst.i.tuted, supposing that I were found guilty. But I fail to see your motive for asking what must be to me a rather painful question."

"Oh, you are strong! You can bear it!" she said, dropping her face upon her hands. Caspar gazed at her in amazement. He began to wonder whether she were going out of her mind. But before he could find any word of calming or consoling tendency, she flung down her hands and spoke again.

"I want you to fix your mind on it for a moment, even although it hurts you," she said. "You are a strong man--you do not shrink from a thing because, it is a little painful. Think what it would mean for yourself, and not for yourself only; for your friends, for those who love you! A perpetual disgrace--a misery!"

"You seem anxious to a.s.sume that I shall be convicted," he said, still with displeasure.

"I tell you I am doing so on purpose. I want you to think of it. You know--you know as well as I do--that the chances are against you!"

"And if they are?"

"If they are--why do you incur such a risk!"

"Mrs. Romaine," said Caspar, gently, but with a steady coldness of tone, of which she did not at first feel the import, "I think you hardly know the force of what you are saying. I do not incur any risk unnecessarily or wantonly: I only wish the truth to be made known. What can I do more--or less?"

"You could go away," she said, almost in a whisper.

If the room had been lighter, she might, perhaps, have seen the frown that was gathering on his brow, the wrath that darkened his eyes as he spoke: but his face was in shadow, and for a moment anger made him speechless. She went on eagerly, breathlessly, without waiting for a reply.

"You might get off quite easily to--to Spain, perhaps, or some place where there was no extradition treaty. You are out on bail, I know; but your friends could not complain. Surely it is a natural enough thing for a man, situated as you are, to wish to escape: n.o.body would blame you in the long run--they would only say that you were wise. And if you stay, everything is against you. You had so much better take your present chance!"

Caspar muttered something inarticulate, then seemed to choke back further utterance, and kept silence for a minute. When he spoke it was in a curiously tranquil tone.

"You do not seem to have heard of the quality that men call their honor?"

"Oh, honor! I have heard enough about honor," she answered with a nervous, rasping laugh. "And you--_you_ to talk about honor--after--after _what you have done_!"

Caspar Brooke fell back a step or two and surveyed her curiously. "Good G.o.d!" The exclamation broke from him, as if against his will. "You speak as though you thought I was guilty--as though I had--_murdered_ Oliver!"

And she, looking at him as intently as he looked at her, said only, in the simplest possible way--

"And did you not?"

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

LOVE OR TRUST.

Caspar turned away. For a moment he felt mortally sick, as if from a pang of acute physical pain. Distrust from an old friend is always a hard thing to bear. And so, for a moment or two, he did not speak.

"I was not surprised," said Mrs. Romaine, quickly. "I had been looking for something of the kind. I won't say that you were not justified--in a certain sense. Oliver acted abominably, I know. He told me what he was going to do beforehand."

"Told you what he was going to do?"

"Yes--to make Lesley fall in love with him. He did not mean to marry her. He meant to gain her affections and then to--to--leave her, to break her heart. I suppose that is what you found out. I do not wonder that you were surprised."

"No doubt you have good authority for what you are saying," said Mr.

Brooke, very coldly, "but your account does not tally with what I have gathered from other sources."