The Lion's Skin Part 38

The ribbon came away easily, and some half-dozen sheets fell out and scattered upon the desk. They gave out a curious perfume, half of age, half of some essence with which years ago they had been imbued.

Something took Mr. Caryll in the throat, and he could never explain whether it was that perfume or some premonitory emotion, some prophetic apprehension of what he was about to see.

He opened the first of those folded sheets, and found it to be a letter written in French and in an ink that had paled to yellow with the years that were gone since it had been penned. The fine, pointed writing was curiously familiar to Mr. Caryll. He looked at the signature at the bottom of the page. It swam before his eyes--ANTOINETTE-"Celle qui l'adore, Antoinette," he read, and the whole world seemed blotted out for him; all consciousness, his whole being, his every sense, seemed concentrated into his eyes as they gazed upon that relic of a deluded woman's dream.

He did not read. It was not for him to commit the sacrilege of reading what that girl who had been his mother had written thirty years ago to the man she loved--the man who had proved false as h.e.l.l.

He turned the other letters over; opened them one by one, to make sure that they were of the same nature as the first, and what time he did so he found himself speculating upon the strangeness of Ostermore's having so treasured them. Perhaps he had thrust them into that secret recess, and there forgotten them; 'twas an explanation that sorted better with what Mr. Caryll knew of his father, than the supposition that so dull and practical and self-centered a nature could have been irradiated by a gleam of such tenderness as the h.o.a.rding of those letters might have argued.

He continued to turn them over, half-mechanically, forgetful of the urgent need to burn the treasonable doc.u.ments he had secured, forgetful of everything, even Hortensia's presence. And meantime she watched him in silence, marvelling at this delay, and still more at the gray look that had crept into his face.

"What have you found?" she asked at last.

"A ghost," he answered, and his voice had a strained, metallic ring. He even vented an odd laugh. "A bundle of old love-letters."

"From her ladyship?"

"Her ladyship?" He looked up, an expression on his face which seemed to show that he could not at the moment think who her ladyship might be.

Then as the picture of that bedaubed, bedizened and harsh-featured Jezebel arose in his mind to stand beside the sweet girl--image of his mother--as he knew her from the portrait that hung at Maligny--he laughed again. "No, not from her ladyship," said he. "From a woman who loved him years ago." And he turned to the seventh and last of those poor ghosts-the seventh, a fateful number.

He spread it before him; frowned down on it a moment with a sharp hiss of indrawn breath. Then he twisted oddly on his chair, and sat bolt upright, staring straight before him with unseeing eyes. Presently he pa.s.sed a hand across his brow, and made a queer sound in his throat.

"What is it?" she asked.

But he did not answer; he was staring at the paper again. A while he sat thus; then with swift fevered fingers he took up once more the other letters. He unfolded one, and began to read. A few lines he read, and then--"O G.o.d!" he cried, and flung out his arms under stress of 'his emotions. One of them caught the taper that stood upon the desk; and swept it, extinguished, to the floor. He never heeded it, never gave a thought to the purpose for which it had been fetched, a purpose not yet served. He rose. He was white as the dead are white, and she observed that he was trembling. He took up the bundle of old letters, and thrust them into an inside pocket of his coat.

"What are you doing?" she cried, seeking at last to arouse him from the spell under which he appeared to have fallen. "Those letters--"

"I must see Lord Ostermore," he answered wildly, and made for the door, reeling like a drunkard in his walk.

CHAPTER XIX. THE END OF LORD OSTERMORE

In the ante-room communicating with Lord Ostermore's bedroom the countess was in consultation with Rotherby, who had been summoned by his mother when my lord was stricken.

Her ladyship occupied the window-seat; Rotherby stood beside her, leaning slightly against the frame of the open window. Their conversation was earnest and conducted in a low key, and one would naturally have conjectured that it had for subject the dangerous condition of the earl. And so it had--the dangerous condition of the earl's political, if not physical, affairs. To her ladyship and her son, the matter of their own future was of greater gravity than the matter of whether his lordship lived or died--which, whatever it may be, is not unreasonable. Since the impeachment of my lord and the coming of the messengers to arrest him, the danger of ruin and beggary were become more imminent--indeed, they impended, and measures must be concerted to avert these evils. By comparison with that, the earl's succ.u.mbing or surviving was a trivial matter; and the concern they had manifested in Sir James' news--when the important, well-nourished physician who had bled his lordship came to inform them that there was hope--was outward only, and a.s.sumed for pure decorum's sake.

"Whether he lives or dies," said the viscount pertinently, after the doctor had departed to return to his patient, "the measures to be taken are the same." And he repeated the substance of their earlier discussions upon this same topic. "If we can but secure the evidence of his treason with Caryll," he wound up, "I shall be able to make terms with Lord Carteret to arrest the proceedings the government may intend, and thus avert the rest.i.tution it would otherwise enforce."

"But if he were to die," said her ladyship, as coldly, horribly calculating as though he were none of hers, "there would be an end to this danger. They could not demand rest.i.tution of the dead, nor impose fines upon him."

Rotherby shook his head. "Believe not that, madam," said he. "They can demand rest.i.tution of his heirs and impose their fines upon the estate.

'Twas done in the case of Chancellor Craggs, though he shot himself."

She raised a haggard face to his. "And do you dream that Lord Carteret would make terms with you?"

"If I can show him--by actual proof--that a conspiracy does exist, that the Stuart supporters are plotting a rising. Proof of that should be of value to Lord Carteret, of sufficient value to the government to warrant the payment of the paltry price I ask--that the impeachment against my father for his dealings with the South Sea Company shall not be allowed.

"But it might involve the worse betrayal of your father, Charles, and if he were to live--"

"'Sdeath, mother, why must you harp on that? I a'n't the fool you think me," he cried. "I shall make it a further condition that my father have immunity. There will be no lack of victims once the plot is disclosed; and they may begin upon that c.o.xcomb Caryll--the d.a.m.ned meddler who is at the bottom of all this garboil."

She sat bemused, her eyes upon the sunlit gardens below, where a faint breeze was stirring the shrub tops.

"There is," she said presently, "a secret drawer somewhere in his desk.

If he has papers they will, no doubt, be there. Had you not best be making search for them?"

He smiled darkly. "I have seen to that already," he replied.

"How?" excitedly. "You have got the papers?"

"No; but I have set an experienced hand to find them, and one, moreover, who has the right by virtue of his warrant--the messenger of the secretary of state."

She sat up, rigid. "'Sdeath! What is't ye mean?"

"No need for alarm," he rea.s.sured her. "This fellow Green is in my pay, as well as in the secretary's, and it will profit him most to keep faith with me. He's a self-seeking dog, content to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, so that there be profit in it, and he'd sacrifice his ears to bring Mr. Caryll to the gallows. I have promised him that and a thousand pounds if we save the estates from confiscation."

She looked at him, between wonder and fear. "Can ye trust him?" she asked breathlessly.

He laughed softly and confidently. "I can trust him to earn a thousand pounds," he answered. "When he heard of the impeachment, he used such influence as he has to be entrusted with the arrest of his lordship; and having obtained his warrant, he came first to me to tell me of it. A thousand pounds is the price of him, body and soul. I bade him seek not only evidence of my lord's having received that plaguey stock, but also papers relating to this Jacobite plot into which his lordship has been drawn by our friend Caryll. He is at his work at present. And I shall hear from him when it is accomplished."

She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "You have very well disposed, Charles,"

she approved him. "If your father lives, it should not be a difficult matter--"

She checked suddenly and turned, while Rotherby, too, looked up and stepped quickly from the window-embrasure where he had stood.

The door of the bedroom had been suddenly pulled open, and Sir James came out, very pale and discomposed.

"Madam--your ladyship--my lord!" he gasped, his mouth working, his hands waving foolishly.

The countess rose to confront him, tall, severe and harsh. The viscount scowled a question. Sir James quailed before them, evidently in affliction.

"Madam--his lordship," he said, and by his eloquent gesture of dejection announced what he had some difficulty in putting into words.

She stepped forward, and took him by the wrist. "Is he dying?" she inquired.

"Have courage, madam," the doctor besought her.

The apparent irrelevancy of the request at such a moment, angered her. Her mood was dangerously testy. And had the doctor but known it, sympathy was a thing she had not borne well these many years.

"I asked you was he dying," she reminded him, with a cold sternness that beat aside all his attempts at subterfuge.

"Your ladyship--he is dead," he faltered, with lowered eyes.

"Dead?" she echoed dully, and her hand went to the region of her heart, her face turned livid under its rouge. "Dead?" she said again, and behind her, Rotherby echoed the dread word in a stupor almost equal to her own. Her lips moved to speak, but no words came. She staggered where she stood, and put her hand to her brow. Her son's arms were quickly about her. He supported her to a chair, where she sank as if all her joints were loosened.

Sir James flew for restoratives; bathed her brow with a dampened handkerchief; held strong salts to her nostrils, and murmured words of foolish, ba.n.a.l consolation, whilst Rotherby, in a half-dreaming condition, stunned by the suddenness of the blow, stood beside her, mechanically lending his a.s.sistance and supporting her.