Elster's Folly Part 25

"Where did you hide the grain you were loaded with?" demanded Pike.

"I'd emptied it out again in the store-room," returned the boy. "I told master there were a loose skiff out there, and he come out and secured it. Them harvesters come up next and got him out of the water."

"Yes, you could see fast enough what you were looking for! Well, young Rip," continued Mr. Pike, consolingly, "you stand about as rich a chance of being hanged as ever you'll stand in all your born days. If you'd jumped through that wire you'd have saved my lord, and he'd have made it right for you with old Floyd. I'd advise you to keep a silent tongue in your head, if you want to save your neck."

"I was keeping it, till you come and made me tell with that there pistol," howled the boy. "You won't go and split on me?" he asked, with trembling lips.

"I won't split on you about the grain," graciously promised Pike. "It's no business of mine. As to the other matter--well, I'll not say anything about that; at any rate, yet awhile. You keep it a secret; so will I."

Without another word, Pike extended his hand as a signal that the culprit was at liberty to depart; and he did so as fast as his legs would carry him. Pike then returned the pistol to his pocket and took his way back to Calne in a thoughtful and particularly ungenial mood. There was a doubt within him whether the boy had disclosed the truth, even to him.

Perhaps on no one--with the exception of Percival--did the death of Lord Hartledon leave its effects as it did on Lady Kirton and her daughter Maude. To the one it brought embarra.s.sment; to the other, what seemed very like a broken heart. The countess-dowager's tactics must change as by magic. She had to transfer the affection and consideration evinced for Edward Lord Hartledon to his brother; and to do it easily and naturally.

She had to obliterate from the mind of the latter her overbearing dislike to him, cause her insults to be remembered no more. A difficult task, even for her, wily woman as she was.

How was it to be done? For three long hours the night after Lord Hartledon's death, she lay awake, thinking out her plans; perhaps for the first time in her life, for obtuse natures do not lie awake. The death had affected her only as regarded her own interests; she could feel for none and regret none in her utter selfishness. One was fallen, but another had risen up. "Le roi est mort: vive le roi!"

On the day following the death she had sought an interview with Percival.

Never a woman evinced better tact than she. There was no violent change in her manner, no apologies for the past, or display of sudden affection.

She spoke quietly and sensibly of pa.s.sing topics: the death, and what could have led to it; the immediate business on hand, some of the changes it entailed in the future. "I'll stay with you still, Percival," she said, "and look after things a bit for you, as I have been doing for your brother. It is an awful shock, and we must all have time to get over it.

If I had only foreseen this, how I might have spared my temper and poor Maude's feelings!"

She looked out of the corner of her eye at the young man; but he betrayed no curiosity to hear more, and she went on unasked.

"You know, Val, for a portionless girl, as Maude is, it was a great blow to me when I found her fixing her heart upon a younger son. How cross and unjust it made me I couldn't conceal: mothers are mothers. I wanted her to take a fancy to Hartledon, dear fellow, and I suppose she could not, and it rendered me cross; and I know I worried her and worried my own temper, till at times I was not conscious of what I said. Poor Maude! she did not rebel openly, but I could see her struggles. Only a week ago, when Hartledon was talking about his marrying sometime, and hinting that she might care fox him if she tried, she scored her beautiful drawing all over with ugly marks; ran the pencil through it--"

"But why do you tell me this now?" asked Val.

"Hartledon--dear me! I wonder how long I shall be getting accustomed to your name?--there's only you and me and Maude left now of the family,"

cried the dowager; "and if I speak of such things, it is in fulness of heart. And now about these letters: do you care how they are worded?"

"I don't seem to care about anything," listlessly answered the young man.

"As to the letters, I think I'd rather write them myself, Lady Kirton."

"Indeed you shall not have any trouble of that sort to-day. _I'll_ write the letters, and you may indulge yourself in doing nothing."

He yielded in his unstable nature. She spoke of business letters, and it was better that he should write them; he wished to write them; but she carried her point, and his will yielded to hers. Would it be a type of the future?--would he yield to her in other things in defiance of his better judgment? Alas! alas!

She picked up her skirts and left him, and went sailing upstairs to her daughter's room. Maude was sitting shivering in a shawl, though the day was hot.

"I've paved the way," nodded the old woman, in meaning tones. "And there's one fortunate thing about Val: he is so truthful himself, one may take him in with his eyes open."

Maude turned _her_ eyes upon her mother: very languid and unspeculative eyes just then.

"I gave him a hint, Maude, that you had been unable to bring yourself to like Hartledon, but had fixed your mind on a younger son. Later, we'll let him suspect who the younger son was."

The words aroused Maude; she started up and stood staring at her mother, her eyes dilating with a sort of horror; her pale cheeks slowly turning crimson.

"I don't understand," she gasped; "I _hope_ I don't understand. You--you do not mean that I am to try to like Val Elster?"

"Now, Maude, no heroics. I'll not see _you_ make a fool of yourself as your sisters have done. He's not Val Elster any longer; he is Lord Hartledon: better-looking than ever his brother was, and will make a better husband, for he'll be more easily led."

"I would not marry Val for the whole world," she said, with strong emotion. "I dislike him; I hate him; I never could be a wife to Val Elster."

"We'll see," said the dowager, pushing up her front, of which she had just caught sight in a gla.s.s.

"Thank Heaven, there's no fear of it!" resumed Maude, collecting her senses, and sitting down again with a relieved sigh; "he is to marry Anne Ashton. Thank Heaven that he loves her!"

"Anne Ashton!" scornfully returned the countess-dowager. "She might have been tolerated when he was Val Elster, not now he is Lord Hartledon. What notions you have, Maude!"

Maude burst into tears. "Mamma, I think it is fearfully indecent for you to begin upon these things already! It only happened last night, and--and it sounds quite horrible."

"When one has to live as I do, one has to do many things decent and indecent," retorted the countess-dowager sharply. "He has had his hint, and you've got yours: and you are no true girl if you suffer yourself now to be triumphed over by Anne Ashton."

Maude cried on silently, thinking how cruel fate was to have taken one brother and spared the other. Who--save Anne Ashton--would have missed Val Elster; while Lord Hartledon--at least he had made the life of one heart. A poor bruised heart now; never, never to be made quite whole again.

Thus the dowager, in her blindness, began her plans. In her blindness! If we could only foresee the ending of some of the unholy schemes that many of us are apt to weave, we might be more willing to leave them humbly in a higher Hand than ours. Do they ever bring forth good, these plans, born of our evil pa.s.sions--hatred, malice, utter selfishness? I think not.

They may seem to succeed triumphantly, but--watch the triumph to the end.

CHAPTER XIII.

FEVER.

The dews of an October evening were falling upon Calne, as Lord Hartledon walked from the railway-station. Just as unexpectedly as he had arrived the morning you first saw him, when he was only Val Elster, had he arrived now. By the merest accident one of the Hartledon servants happened to be at the station when the train arrived, and took charge of his master's luggage.

"All well at home, James?"

"All quite well, my lord."

Several weeks had elapsed since his brother's death, and Lord Hartledon had spent them in London. He went up on business the week after the funeral, and did not return again. In one respect he had no inducement to return; for the Ashtons, including Anne, were on a visit in Wales. They were at home now, as he knew well; and perhaps that had brought him down.

He went in unannounced, finding his way to the inner drawing-room. A large fire blazed in the grate, and Lady Maude sat by it so intent in thought as not to observe his entrance. She wore a black crepe dress, with a little white tr.i.m.m.i.n.g on its low body and sleeves. The firelight played on her beautiful features; and her eyelashes glistened as if with tears: she was thinner and paler; he saw it at once. The countess-dowager kept to Hartledon and showed no intention of moving from it: she and her daughter had been there alone all these weeks.

"How are you, Maude?"

She looked round and started up, backing from him with a face of alarm.

Ah, was it _instinct_ caused her so to receive him? What, or who, was she thinking of; holding her hands before her with that face of horror?

"Maude, have I so startled you?"

"Percival! I beg your pardon. I believe I was thinking of--of your brother, and I really did not know you in the uncertain light. We don't have the rooms lighted early," she added, with a little laugh.

He took her hands in his. Now that she knew him, and the alarm was over, she seemed really pleased to see him: the dark eyes were raised to his with a frank smile.

"May I take a cousin's greeting, Maude?"