The Master of Appleby Part 15

If one of his thin hands that clutched the chair arms had pressed a secret spring and loosed a trap to send me gasping down an oubliette, I should have been the less astounded. Indeed, for some short s.p.a.ce I thought him mad; yet, on second thought, I saw the method in his madness. Could Margery be brought to view it calmly, this was a sword to cut the knot of all entanglements.

As matters stood, the world would call her widow at my death; and since a woman is first of all the keeper of her own good name, she would never dare aver the truth. So in common justice she should own the name the world would call her by. Again, as matters stood, no wrong could come of it to her, or Richard Jennifer, or any. d.i.c.k would love her none the less because a dying man had given her his name for some few hours. And if, at any future time, the Ireton t.i.tle should revive and this poor double-dealing miser should be forced to quit his hold on Appleby Hundred, my father's acres would be hers in her own right. One breach in all this sudden-builded wall I saw, but could not mend it. With the Ireton acres hers by double right, the baronet would press his suit with greater vigor than before. But as to this, no further act of mine could help or hinder; and if I died her husband she would in decency delay a while.

So summing up in far less time than it has cost to write it out for you, I gave my host his answer.

"I told you you might name the deed, and I would do it, Mr. Stair. If you can make your daughter understand--"

"The jade will do as she is bid," he cut in wrathfully. "If she will drag my good name in the mire, I'm d.a.m.ned if she sha'n't pay the scot.

And now about the settlements, Captain Ireton; you'll be making her legatee residuary?"

At this I saw his drift again, most clearly; that he would never stickle for his daughter's honor, but for the quieting of his t.i.tle to my father's lands--a t.i.tle that my cousin Septimus might dispute. It was enough to set me obstinate against him; but I constrained myself to think of Margery and Richard Jennifer, and not at all of this poor petty miser.

"I'll sign a quitclaim in her favor, if that is what you mean," I said.

"But 'tis a mere pen-scratch for the lawyers to haggle over. As you said a while ago, the wife will be the husband's heir-at-law, in any event."

"True; but we'd best be at it in due and proper form." He rose and hobbled to the door and was so set upon haste that his shaking hand played a rattling tattoo on the latch. "I--I'll go and have the papers drawn, and you will sign them, Captain Ireton; I have your pa.s.sed word that you will sign them?"

"Aye; they shall be signed."

He went away at that, and Tybee entered. Much to my comfort, the lieutenant asked no questions; so far from it, he crossed the room without a word, flung himself into the great chair and left me to my own communings.

These were not altogether of a.s.surance. Though I had promised readily enough to make my lie a truth, I saw that all was yet contingent upon my lady's viewing of the proposal. That I could win her over I had some hope, if only they would leave the task for me. But there was room to fear that this poor miser father would make it all a thing of property and so provoke her to resistance. And, notwithstanding what he said--that she would do as she was bid--I thought I knew her temper well enough to prophesy a hitch. For I made sure of one thing, that if she put her will against the world, the world would never move her.

'Twas past midnight, with Tybee dozing in his chair, when next I heard some stirrings in the corridor. As before, it was the lifting of the wooden bar that roused my friendly guard, and when he went to parley at the door I stood apart and turned my back.

When I looked again my company was come. At the table, busied with a parchment that might have been a ducal t.i.tle deed for size, stood Gilbert Stair and the factor-lawyer, Owen Pengarvin. A little back of them the good old Father Matthieu had Margery on his arm. And in the corner Tybee stood to keep the door.

I grouped them all in one swift eye-sweep, and having listed them, strove to read some lessoning of my part in my dear lady's face. She gave me nothing of encouragement, nor yet a cue of any kind to lead to what it was that she would have me say or do. As I had seen it last, under the light of the flaring torches in the room below, her face was cold and still; and she was standing motionless beside the priest, looking straight at me, it seemed, with eyes that saw nothing.

It was the factor-lawyer who broke the silence, saying, with his predetermined smirk, that the parchment was ready for my signature.

Thinking it well beneath me to measure words with this knavish pettifogger, I looked beyond him and spoke to his master.

"I would have a word or two in private with your daughter before this matter ripens further, Mr. Stair," I said.

My lady dropped the priest's arm and came to stand beside me in the window-bay. I offered her a chair but she refused to sit. There was so little time to spare that I must needs begin without preliminary.

"What has your father told you, Margery?" I asked.

"He tells me nothing that I care to know."

"But he has told you what you must do?"

"Yes." She looked with eyes that saw me not.

"And you are here to do it of your own free will?"

"No."

"Yet it must be done."

"So he says, and so you say. But I had rather die."

"'Tis not a pleasing thing, I grant you, Margery; notwithstanding, of our two evils it is by far the less. Bethink you a moment: 'tis but the saying of a few words by the priest, and the bearing of my name for some short while till you can change it for a better."

Her deep-welled eyes met mine, and in them was a flash of anger.

"Is that what marriage means to you, Captain Ireton?"

"No, truly. But we have no choice. 'Tis this, or I must leave you in the morning to worse things than the bearing of my name. I would it had not thus been thrust upon us, but I could see no other way."

"See what comes of tampering with the truth," she said, and I could see her short lip curl with scorn. "Why should you lie and lie again, when any one could see that it must come to this--or worse?"

"I saw it not," I said. "But had I stopped to look beyond the moment's need and seen the end from the beginning, I fear I should have lied yet other times. Your honor was at stake, dear lady."

"My honor!"--this in bitterest irony. "What is a woman's honor, sir, when you or any man has patched and sewed and sought to make it whole again? I will not say the word you'd have me say!"

"But you must say it, Margery. 'Tis but the merest form; you forget that you will be a wife only in name. I shall not live to make you rue it."

"You make me rue it now, beforehand. _Mon Dieu!_ is a woman but a thing, to stand before the priest and plight her troth for 'merest form'?

You'll make me hate you while I live--and after!"

"You'd hate me worse, Margery dear, if I should leave you drowning in this ditch. And I can bear your hatred for some few hours, knowing that if I sinned and robbed you, I did make rest.i.tution as I could."

She heard me through with eyelids down and some fierce storm of pa.s.sion shaking her. And when she answered her voice was low and soft; yet it cut me like a knife.

"You drive me to it--listen, sir, _you drive me to it_! And I have said that I shall hate you for it. Come; 'tis but a mockery, as you say; and they are waiting."

I sought to take her hand and lead her forth, but this she would not suffer. She walked beside me, proud and cold and scornful; stood beside me while I sat and read the parchment over. It was no marriage settlement; it was a will, drawn out in legal form. And in it I bequeathed to Margery Ireton as her true jointure, not any claim of mine to Appleby Hundred, _but the estate itself_.

I read it through as I have said, and, looking across to these two plotters, the miser-master and his henchman, smiled as I had never thought to smile again.

"So," said I; "the truth is out at last. I wondered if the confiscation act had left you wholly scatheless, Mr. Stair. Well, I am content. I shall die the easier for knowing that I have lain a guest in my own house. Give me the pen."

'Twas given quickly, and I signed the will, with Tybee and the lawyer for the witnesses; Margery standing by the while and looking on; though not, I made sure, with any realizing of the business matter.

When all was done the priest found his book, and we stood before him; the woman who had sworn to hate, and the man who, loving her to full forgetfulness of death itself, must yet be cold and formal, masking his love for her dear sake, and for the sake of loyalty to his friend. And here again 'twas Tybee and the lawyer who were the witnesses; the one well hated, and the other loved if but for this; that when the time came for the giving of the ring, he drew a gold band from his little finger and made me take and use it.

And so that deed was done in some such sorry fashion as the time and place constrained; and had you stood within the four walls of that upper room you would have thought the chill of death had touched us, and that the low-voiced priest was shriving us the while we knelt to take his benediction. All through this farce--which was in truth the grimmest of all tragedies--my lady played her part as one who walks in sleep; and at the end she let her father lead her out with not a word or look or sign to me.

You'd guess that I would take it hard--her leaving of me thus, as I made sure, for all eternity; and I did take it hard. For when the strain was off, and there was no one by to see or hear save my good-hearted death-watch, I must needs go down upon my knees beside the bed in childish weakness, and sob and choke and let the hot tears come as I had not since at this same bedside I had knelt a little lad to take my mother's dying love.

XII

HOW THE NEWS CAME TO UNWELCOME EARS