Elster's Folly Part 40

A triumph!

The above was not the only letter written that evening. At the hotel where Lord and Lady Hartledon halted for the night, when she had retired under convoy of her maid, then Val's restrained remorse broke out. He paced the room in a sort of mad restlessness; in the midst of which he suddenly sat down to a table on which lay pens, ink, and paper, and poured forth hasty sentences in his mind's wretched tumult.

"My Dear Mrs. Ashton,

"I cannot address you in any more formal words, although you will have reason to fling down the letter at my presuming to use these now--for dear, most dear, you will ever be to me.

"What can I say? Why do I write to you? Indeed to the latter question I can only answer I do not know, save that some instinct of good feeling, not utterly dead within me, is urging me to it.

"Will you let me for a moment throw conventionality aside; will you for that brief s.p.a.ce of time let me speak truly and freely to you, as one might speak who has pa.s.sed the confines of this world?

"When a man behaves to a woman as I, to my eternal shame, have this day behaved to Anne, it is, I think, a common custom to regard the false man as having achieved a sort of triumph; to attribute somewhat of humiliation to the other.

"Dear Mrs. Ashton, I cannot sleep until I have said to you that in my case the very contrary is the fact. A more abject, humiliated man than I stand at this hour in my own eyes never yet took his sins upon his soul. Even you might be appeased if you could look into mine and see its sense of degradation.

"That my punishment has already come home to me is only just; that I shall have to conceal it from all the world, including my wife, will not lessen its sting.

"I have this evening married Maude Kirton. I might tell you of unfair play brought to bear upon me, of a positive a.s.surance, apparently well grounded, that Anne had entered into an engagement to wed another, could I admit that these facts were any excuse for me. They are no excuse; not the slightest palliation. My own yielding folly alone is to blame, and I shall take shame to myself for ever.

"I write this to you as I might have written it to my own mother, were she living; not as an expiation; only to tell of my pain; that I am not utterly hardened; that I would sue on my knees for pardon, were it not shut out from me by my own act. There is no pardon for such as I. When you have torn it in pieces, you will, I trust, forget the writer.

"G.o.d bless you, dear Mrs. Ashton! G.o.d bless and comfort another who is dear to you!--and believe me with true undying remorse your once attached friend,

"Hartledon."

It was a curious letter to write; but men of Lord Hartledon's sensitive temperament in regard to others' feelings often do strange things; things the world at large would stare at in their inability to understand them.

The remorse might not have come home to him quite so soon as this, his wedding-day, but for the inopportune appearance of Dr. Ashton in the chapel, speaking those words that told home so forcibly. Such reproach on these vacillating men inflicts a torture that burns into the heart like living fire.

He sealed the letter, addressing it to Cannes; called a waiter, late as it was, and desired him to post it. And then he walked about the room, reflecting on the curse of his life--his besetting sin--irresolution. It seemed almost an anomaly for _him_ to make resolves; but he did make one then; that he would, with the help of Heaven, be a MAN from henceforth, however it might crucify his sensitive feelings. And for the future, the obligation he had that day taken upon himself he determined to fulfil to his uttermost in all honour and love; to cherish his wife as he would have cherished Anne Ashton. For the past--but Lord Hartledon rose up now with a start. There was one item of that past he dared not glance at, which did not, however, relate to Miss Ashton: and it appeared inclined to thrust itself prominently forward to-night.

Could Lord Hartledon have borrowed somewhat of the easy indifference of the countess-dowager, he had been a happier man. That lady would have made a female Nero, enjoying herself while Rome was burning. She remained on in her snug quarters at Hartledon, and lived in clover.

One evening, rather more than a week after the marriage, Hedges had been on an errand to Calne, and was hastening home. In the lonely part of the road near Hartledon, upon turning a sharp corner, he came upon Mirrable, who was standing talking to Pike, very much to the butler's surprise.

Pike walked away at once; and the butler spoke.

"He is not an acquaintance of yours, that man, Mrs. Mirrable?"

"Indeed no," she answered, tossing her head. "It was like his impudence to stop me. Rather flurried me too," she continued: and indeed Hedges noticed that she seemed flurried.

"What did he stop you for? To beg?"

"Not that. I've never heard that he does beg. He accosted me with a cool question as to when his lordship was coming back to Hartledon. I answered that it could not be any business of his. And then you came up."

"He is uncommon curious as to my lord. I can't make it out. I've seen him prowling about the grounds: and the night of the marriage he was mounted up at the chapel window. Lord Hartledon saw him, too. I should like to know what he wants."

"By a half-word he let drop, I fancy he has a crotchet in his head that his lordship will find him some work when he comes home. But I must go on my way," added Mirrable. "Mrs. Gum's not well, and I sent word I'd look in for half-an-hour this evening."

Hedges had to go on his way also, for it was close upon the countess-dowager's dinner-hour, at which ceremony he must attend. Putting his best foot forward, he walked at more than an ordinary pace, and overtook a gentleman almost at the very door of Hartledon. The stranger was approaching the front entrance, Hedges was wheeling off to the back; but the former turned and spoke. A tall, broad-shouldered, grey-haired man, with high cheek-bones. Hedges took him for a clergyman from his attire; black, with a white neckcloth.

"This is Hartledon House, I believe," he said, speaking with a Scotch accent.

"Yes, sir."

"Do you belong to it?"

"I am Lord Hartledon's butler."

"Is Lord Hartledon at home?"

"No, sir. He is in France."

"I read a notice of his marriage in the public papers," continued the stranger, whose eyes were fixed on Hedges. "It was, I suppose, a correct one?"

"My lord was married the week before last: about ten or eleven days ago."

"Ay; April the fourteenth, the paper said. She is one of the Kirton family. When do you expect him home?"

"I don't know at all, sir. I've not heard anything about it."

"He is in France, you say, Paris, I suppose. Can you furnish me with his address?"

Up to this point the colloquy had proceeded smoothly on both sides: but it suddenly flashed into the mind of Hedges that the stranger's manner was somewhat mysterious, though in what the mystery lay he could not have defined. The communicative man, true to the interests of his master, became cautious at once: he supposed some of Lord Hartledon's worries, contracted when he was Mr. Elster, were returning upon him.

"I cannot give his address, sir. And for the matter of that, it might not be of use if I could. Lord and Lady Hartledon did not intend remaining any length of time in one place."

The stranger had dug the point of his umbrella into the level greensward that bounded the gravel, and swayed the handle about with his hand, pausing in thought.

"I have come a long way to see Lord Hartledon," he observed. "It might be less trouble and cost for me to go on to Paris and see him there, than to start back for home, and come here again when he returns to England. Are you sure you can't give me his address?"

"I'm very sorry I can't, sir. There was a talk of their going on to Switzerland," continued Hedges, improvising the journey, "and so coming back through Germany; and there _was_ a talk of their making Italy before the heat came on, and stopping there. Any way, sir, I dare say they are already away from Paris."

The stranger regarded Hedges attentively, rather to the discomfiture of that functionary, who thought he was doubted. He then asked a great many questions, some about Lord Hartledon's personal habits, some about Lady Maude: the butler answered them freely or cautiously, as he thought he might, feeling inclined all the while to chase the intruder off the premises. Presently he turned his attention on the house.

"A fine old place, this, Mr. Butler."

"Yes, sir."

"I suppose I could look over it, if I wished?"

Hedges hesitated. He was privately asking himself whether the law would allow the stranger, if he had come after any debt of Lord Hartledon's, to refuse to leave the house, once he got into it.

"I could ask Lady Kirton, sir, if you particularly wished it."

"Lady Kirton? You have some one in the house, then!"

"The Dowager Lady Kirton's here, sir. One of her sons also--Captain Kirton; but he is confined to his room."

"Then I would rather not go in," said the stranger quickly. "I'm very disappointed to have come all this way and not find Lord Hartledon."