The Master of the Ceremonies Part 100

Mellersh, your arm."

There was no need for his desire to be attended to, for Burnett had stood looking on for a few minutes, and then gone off, to be slowly followed by the others, the wounded man being compelled by faintness to halt from time to time till the barrack gate was reached.

Half an hour later Lord Carboro' was in consultation with Barclay, Mellersh, and Linnell outside the Denvilles' house.

"Gravani?" said Lord Carboro', "to be sure--Louis Gravani. I gave him some painting to do when he was here. Italian--and the knife--a former lover, of course?"

"Mrs Barclay tells me, my lord," said Barclay, gravely, "that he was really Mrs Burnett's husband."

"d.i.c.k," said Mellersh, as they were walking slowly back, "of what are you thinking?"

"Of Claire."

Mellersh said no more, but when they reached home sat musing over the fact that there was a light in Cora's window, and that she was looking out. But it was not for him.

Volume Three, Chapter VIII.

THE FRIEND IN NEED.

There was quite a meeting at little Miss Clode's the next morning, after a heavy storm that had set in during the night; but, though the ordinary atmosphere was fresh, clear, cool and bright after the heavy rain, the social atmosphere grew more dense and lurid, hour by hour, as the callers rolled the news snow-ball on till Annie Clode's eyes looked as if they would never close again, and her mouth formed a veritable round O.

Miss Clode herself was in a state of nervous prostration, but she forced herself to be in the shop and listen, gathering sc.r.a.ps of information which she sifted, casting aside the rubbish and retaining only what was good, so as to piece together afterwards, and lay before herself what was the whole truth.

The accounts were sufficiently alarming; and among others it was current that Sir Harry Payne was eloping with Claire Denville, when Mrs Burnett followed to stop them, and Frank Burnett in a fit of rage and jealousy, stabbed her and Sir Harry.

Another account stated that it was Sir Matthew Bray who had stabbed Mrs Burnett, and that he had been seized and put in prison for the deed, while Lady Drelincourt had gone mad from love and misery, and had been found by Fisherman d.i.c.k and a couple of friends six miles inland, lost on the Downs, drenched with rain, and raving so that she had had to be held down in the cart that the fishermen had been using to carry mackerel.

Everybody smiled at the word mackerel, and thought of French brandy for some reason or another.

This last business was as much canva.s.sed as May Burnett's injury, for subsequent inquiry proved that Lady Drelincourt really had been brought home by Fisherman d.i.c.k, and that she was delirious and attended by two doctors.

Sir Matthew Bray, too, was certainly in prison, and n.o.body troubled him or herself to discriminate between an arrest for debt set about next day by Josiah Barclay, and one for some criminal offence.

The whole affair was like a G.o.dsend, just when scandal was starving for want of sustenance, and Saltinville at its lowest ebb.

Some one had seen the postboys, and knew that Lord Carboro' was up at the cross-roads, where he had gone to fight a duel with Colonel Mellersh over a card-table quarrel, and they happened to be just in time to help May Burnett when her sister stabbed Sir Harry Payne.

Some one else quarrelled indignantly with this version, for she knew from Lady Drelincourt's maid that it was her ladyship herself, who in a fit of indignant jealousy had stabbed Claire Denville and Sir Matthew Bray, whom everyone knew she loved desperately, and that she had afterwards gone distracted because she had nearly killed Sir Matthew.

This narrator went off in high dudgeon on being openly contradicted, and told that she was entirely wrong, for the fact was that young Cornet Morton Denville, who saved Lady Drelincourt's pet dog, and for whom her ladyship had bought a commission, had challenged Sir Matthew Bray to fight with swords at the cross-roads. They had met, but Lady Drelincourt, in alarm, had gone and told Morton Denville's sisters, and they had all three gone up together in a post-chaise with Sir Harry Payne on horseback. They had come up just in the heat of the fight, and Sir Harry and Mrs Burnett had rushed between them, and both been wounded; and in her horror at being the cause of such bloodshed, Lady Drelincourt had exclaimed, "I would give my diamonds and everything I possess to be able to undo this terrible night's work."

Such minute knowledge carried all before it, and for quite an hour this was the accepted version.

Somehow, Louis Gravani, save with three or four of the witnesses of the tragedy, dropped entirely out of the affair, going as suddenly as he had come, though he seemed always present in the little bedchamber on the Parade, where May lay almost at the point of death, muttering feebly, and appealing to him not to be so cruel as to kill her, because she always thought that he was dead.

The surgeon had done all that was possible, and he had consulted with the princ.i.p.al physician as to the course to be pursued; and then, in the face of two grave wounds in the neck and breast of the frail, childish little creature, they had left her to the wild delirium that had set in--one whose fever was burning away rapidly the flickering life that was left.

The window was wide open, and the soft, low rush of the water upon the shingle floated in like soft, murmurous music through the flowers that it had always been Claire's pleasure to tend. Then a faint, querulous cry, oft repeated, came from seaward, where the soft grey-plumaged gulls swept here and there, and dipped down at the sh.e.l.ly shoals laid bare as the tide ebbed and flowed. It was a weird, uneasy sound, that accorded well with the painful scene in the chamber given up to the sick girl, by whose side stood Claire, pale and anxious, ready to fan the burning face, or rearrange the bedclothes tossed uneasily away.

Near the foot of the bed sat the Master of the Ceremonies, grey, hollow-cheeked, and with a wild look of despairing horror in his eyes, as he gazed at his little fallen idol, for whom he had fought and schemed, and whom he had so obstinately held aloft in his own heart, to the disparagement of her patient, forbearing sister.

"Is it true, Claire?" he murmured at last; "is it true, or some dreadful dream? My child! My child!"

Then his face grew convulsed with horror, as May turned her face towards him, and began speaking rapidly:

"Don't, Louis--pray: don't.--No: I am afraid.--Take me away quickly, dear.--No one will know, and I hate him so.--Little mean wretch!--They made me marry him, and I hate him more and more.--Hush!"

Denville groaned, and, as his head drooped upon his breast, Claire heard him murmur:

"Is it a judgment--is it a judgment for the past?"

She shivered as she listened to his words, but a quick movement and a low cry of pain made her bend over her sister again.

"Take me away," she said, after a few moments; and her pinched face bore a look of terror that stabbed those who watched with an agonising pain.

"I tell you I hate Frank, and I dare not meet poor Louis now. It is not he, but something from the dead. Claire--Claire--hold me. Sister, help! Don't let me go. Am I going to die?"

"May, May!" whispered Claire soothingly, as she laid her cheek against the burning face; and the sick girl sighed, and made an effort to cling to her, but her feeble arm dropped heavily upon the coverlid.

"Don't let Louis come now. Is that Frank? Is that--"

She wandered off, muttering quickly and incoherently as she threw her head from side to side for a time; and then, utterly exhausted, seemed to sleep.

"Has--has Frank Burnett been?" whispered her father, looking timidly at Claire.

She shook her head sadly.

"No," said Denville; "he will not come. He would not even if she were to die. She must get better; and we will do as you have often said: go right away, where we are not known, and where we shall be safe."

In spite of herself, Claire darted at him a horrified look, which he saw and winced at, as he rose feebly, and began to pace the room, stopping at length before the window to gaze out at the sunlit sea.

"Strange!" he murmured; "the world so beautiful, and my life one dreary course of agony and pain. Claire, what do the doctors really think-- that she will live?"

"I pray G.o.d they do!" said Claire solemnly.

"Yes; she must live and repent. There is pardon for those who suffer and repent, my child. Don't look at me like that; you do not know.

Claire, is this my punishment? Surely no worse suffering can befall me now."

"Dear father," whispered Claire; "let the past be dead."

"Hush!" he cried, grasping her hand; "Don't talk of death, girl--here.

She must live, and we will go away before--before it is too late. Has Morton been?"

Claire shook her head mournfully.

"No; he would not come. He must not come," said the old man quickly.

"He is well placed, and he must not come near such pariahs as we are.

No, no; don't look like that," he whispered pa.s.sionately. "Why should he drag himself down? It is too much to ask of the boy."

He went on tip-toe to the bed, and took the little feverish hand that lay outside the coverlid, and kissed and stroked it as he muttered to himself: