Thelma Part 69

"_Apropos_ of Lennox," went on Lorimer, sympathetically watching his friend, "I came on purpose to speak to you about him. I've got some news for you. He's a regular sneak and scoundrel. You can thrash him to your heart's content for he has grossly insulted your wife."

"_Insulted_ her?" cried Errington furiously. "How,--What--"

"Give me time to speak!" And George laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Thelma visited my mother yesterday and told her that on the night before, when you had gone out, Lennox took advantage of your absence to come here and make love to her,--and she actually had to struggle with him, and even to strike him, in order to release herself from his advances. My mother advised her to tell you about it--and she evidently then had no intention of flight, for she said she would inform you of everything as soon as you returned from the country. And if Lady Winsleigh hadn't interfered, it's very probable that--I say, where are you going?" This as Philip made a bound for the door.

"To get my horsewhip!" he answered.

"All right--I approve!" cried Lorimer. "But wait one instant, and see how clear the plot becomes. Thelma's beauty had maddened Lennox,--to gain her good opinion, as he thinks, he throws his mistress, Violet Vere, on _your_ shoulders--(your ingenuous visits to the Brilliant Theatre gave him a capital pretext for this) and as for Lady Winsleigh's share in the mischief, it's nothing but mere feminine spite against you for marrying at all, and hatred of the woman whose life is such a contrast to her own, and who absorbs all your affection. Lennox has used her as his tool and the Vere also, I've no doubt. The thing's as clear as crystal. It's a sort of general misunderstanding all round--one of those eminently unpleasant trifles that very frequently upset the peace and comfort of the most quiet and inoffensive persons. But the fault lies with _you_, dear old boy!"

"With _me_!" exclaimed Philip.

"Certainly! Thelma's soul is as open as daylight--you shouldn't have had any secret from her, however trifling. She's not a woman 'on guard,'--she can't take life as the most of us do, in military fashion, with ears p.r.i.c.ked for the approach of a spy, and prepared to expect betrayal from her most familiar friends. She accepts things as they appear, without any suspicion of mean ulterior designs. It's a pity, of course!--it's a pity she can't be worldly-wise, and scheme and plot and plan and lie like the rest of us! However, _your_ course is plain--first interview Lennox and then follow Thelma. She can't have left Hull yet,--there are scarcely any boats running to Norway at this season.

You'll overtake her I'm certain."

"By Jove, Lorimer!" said Errington suddenly. "Clara Winsleigh sticks at nothing--do you know she actually had the impudence to suggest that _you_,--you, of all people,--were in love with Thelma!"

Lorimer flushed up, but laughed lightly. "How awfully sweet of her! Much obliged to her, I'm sure! And how did you take it Phil?"

"Take it? I didn't take it at all," responded Philip warmly. "Of course, I knew it was only her spite--she'd say anything in one of her tempers."

Lorimer looked at him with a sudden tenderness in his blue eyes. Then he laughed again, a little forcedly, and said--

"Be off, old man, and get that whip of yours! We'll run Lennox to earth.

Hullo! here's Britta!"

The little maid entered hurriedly at that moment,--she came to ask with quivering lips, whether she might accompany Sir Philip in his intended journey to Norway.

"For if you do not find the Froken at Hull, you will want to reach the Altenfjord," said Britta, folding hands resolutely in front of her ap.r.o.n, "and you will not get on without me. You do not know what the country is like in the depth of winter when the sun is asleep. You must have the reindeer to help you--and no Englishman knows how to drive reindeer. And--and--" here Britta's eyes filled--"you have not thought, perhaps, that the journey may make the Froken very ill--and that when we find her--she may be dying--" and Britta's strength gave way in a big sob that broke from the depths of her honest, affectionate heart.

"Don't--_don't_ talk like that, Britta!" cried Philip pa.s.sionately. "I can't bear it! Of course, you shall go with me! I wouldn't leave you behind for the world! Get everything ready--" and in a fever of heat and impatience he began rummaging among some books on a side-shelf, till he found the time-tables he sought. "Yes,--here we are,--there's a train leaving for Hull at five--we'll take that. Tell Morris to pack my portmanteau, and you bring it along with you to the Midland railway-station this afternoon. Do you understand?"

Britta nodded emphatically, and hurried off at once to busy herself with these preparations, while Philip, all excitement, dashed off to give a few parting injunctions to Neville, and to get his horsewhip.

Lorimer, left alone for a few minutes, seated himself in an easy chair and began absently turning over the newspapers on the table. But his thoughts were far away, and presently he covered his eyes with one hand as though the light hurt them. When he removed it, his lashes were wet.

"What a fool I am!" he muttered impatiently. "Oh Thelma, Thelma! my darling!--how I wish I could follow and find you and console you!--you poor, tender, resigned soul, going away like this because you thought you were not wanted--not wanted!--my G.o.d!--if you only knew how one man at least has wanted and yearned for you ever since he saw your sweet face!--Why can't I tear you out of my heart--why can't I love some one else? Ah Phil!--good, generous, kind old Phil!--he little guesses," he rose and paced the room up and down restlessly. "The fact is I oughtn't to be here at all--I ought to leave England altogether for a long time--till--till I get over it. The question is, _shall_ I ever get over it? Sigurd was a wise boy--he found a short way out of all his troubles,--suppose I imitate his example? No,--for a man in his senses that would be rather cowardly--though it might be pleasant!" He stopped in his walk with a pondering expression on his face. "At any rate, I won't stop here to see her come back--I couldn't trust myself,--I should say something foolish--I know I should! I'll take my mother to Italy--she wants to go; and we'll stay with Lovelace. It'll be a change--and I'll have a good stand-up fight with myself, and see if I can't come off the conqueror somehow! It's all very well to kill an opponent in battle but the question is, can a man kill his inner, grumbling, discontented, selfish Self? If he can't, what's the good of him?"

As he was about to consider this point reflectively, Errington entered, equipped for travelling, and whip in hand. His imagination had been at work during the past few minutes, exaggerating all the horrors and difficulties of Thelma's journey to the Altenfjord, till he was in a perfect fever of irritable excitement.

"Come on Lorimer!" he cried. "There's no time to lose! Britta knows what to do--she'll meet me at the station. I can't breathe in this wretched house a moment longer--let's be off!"

Plunging out into the hall, he bade Morris summon a hansom,--and with a few last instructions to that faithful servitor, and an encouraging kind word and shake of the hand to Neville, who with a face of remorseful misery, stood at the door to watch his departure,--he was gone. The hansom containing him and Lorimer rattled rapidly towards the abode of Sir Francis Lennox, but on entering Piccadilly, the vehicle was compelled to go so slowly on account of the traffic, that Errington, who every moment grew more and more impatient, could not stand it.

"By Jove! this is like a walking funeral!" he muttered. "I say Lorimer, let's get out! We can do the rest on foot."

They stopped the cabman and paid him his fare--then hurried along rapidly, Errington every now and then giving a fiercer clench to the formidable horsewhip which was twisted together with his ordinary walking-stick in such a manner as not to attract special attention.

"Coward and liar!" he muttered, as he thought of the man he was about to punish. "He shall pay for his dastardly falsehood--by Jove he shall!

It'll be a precious long time before he shows himself in society any more!"

Then he addressed Lorimer. "You may depend upon it he'll shout 'police!

police!' and make for the door," he observed. "You keep your back against it, Lorimer! I don't care how many fines I've got to pay as long as I can thrash him soundly!"

"All right!" Lorimer answered, and they quickened their pace. As they neared the chambers which Sir Francis Lennox rented over a fashionable jeweller's shop, they became aware of a small procession coming straight towards them from the opposite direction. _Something_ was being carried between four men who appeared to move with extreme care and gentleness,--this something was surrounded by a crowd of boys and men whose faces were full of morbid and frightened interest--the whole _cortege_ was headed by a couple of solemn policemen. "You spoke of a walking funeral just now," said Lorimer suddenly. "This looks uncommonly like one."

Errington made no reply--he had only one idea in his mind,--the determination to chastise and thoroughly disgrace Sir Francis. "I'll hound him out of the clubs!" he thought indignantly. "His own set shall know what a liar he is--and if I can help it he shall never hold up his head again!"

Entirely occupied as he was with these reflections, he paid no heed to anything that was going on in the street, and he scarcely heard Lorimer's last observation. So that he was utterly surprised and taken aback, when he, with Lorimer, was compelled to come to a halt before the very door of the jeweller, Lennox's landlord, while the two policemen cleared a pa.s.sage through the crowd, saying in low tones, "Stand aside, gentlemen, please!--stand aside," thus making gradual way for four bearers, who, as was now plainly to be seen, carried a common wooden stretcher covered with a cloth, under which lay what seemed, from its outline, to be a human figure.

"What's the matter here?" asked Lorimer, with a curious cold thrill running through him as he put the simple question.

One of the policemen answered readily enough.

"An accident, sir. Gentleman badly hurt. Down at Charing Cross Station--tried to jump into a train when it had started,--foot caught,--was thrown under the wheels and dragged along some distance--doctor says he can't live, sir."

"Who is he,--what's his name?"

"Lennox, sir--leastways, that's the name on his card--and this is the address. Sir Francis Lennox, I believe it is."

Errington uttered a sharp exclamation of horror,--at that moment the jeweller came out of the recesses of his shop with uplifted hands and bewildered countenance.

"An accident? Good Heavens!--Sir Francis! Up-stairs!--take him up-stairs!" Here he addressed the bearers. "You should have gone round to the private entrance--he mustn't be seen in the shop--frightening away all my customers--here, pa.s.s through!--pa.s.s through, as quick as you can!"

And they did pa.s.s through,--carrying their crushed burden tenderly along by the shining gla.s.s cases and polished counters, where glimmered and flashed jewels of every size and l.u.s.tre for the adorning of the children of this world,--slowly and carefully, step by step, they reached the upper floor,--and there, in a luxurious apartment furnished with almost feminine elegance, they lifted the inanimate form from the stretcher and laid it down, still shrouded, on a velvet sofa, removing the last number of _Truth_, and two of Zola's novels, to make room for the heavy, unconscious head.

Errington and Lorimer stood at the doorway, completely overcome by the suddenness of the event--they had followed the bearers up-stairs almost mechanically,--exchanging no word or glance by the way,--and now they watched in almost breathless suspense while a surgeon who was present, gently turned back the cover that hid the injured man's features and exposed them to full view. Was _that_ Sir Francis? that blood-smeared, mangled creature?--_that_ the lascivious dandy,--the disciple of no-creed and self-worship? Errington shuddered and averted his gaze from that hideous face,--so horribly contorted,--yet otherwise deathlike in its rigid stillness. There was a grave hush. The surgeon still bent over him--touching here, probing there, with tenderness and skill,--but finally he drew back with a hopeless shake of his head.

"Nothing can be done," he whispered. "Absolutely nothing!"

At that moment Sir Francis stirred,--he groaned and opened his eyes;--what terrible eyes they were, filled with that look of intense anguish, and something worse than anguish,--fear--frantic fear--coward fear--fear that was almost more overpowering than his bodily suffering.

He stared wildly at the little group a.s.sembled--strange faces, so far as he could make them out, that regarded him with evident compa.s.sion,--what --what was all this--what did it mean? Death? No, no! he thought madly, while his brain reeled with the idea--death? What _was_ death?--darkness, annihilation, blackness--all that was horrible--unimaginable! G.o.d! he would _not_ die! G.o.d!--who _was_ G.o.d? No matter--he would live;--he would struggle against this heaviness,--this coldness--this pillar of ice in which he was being slowly frozen--frozen--frozen!--inch by--inch!

He made a furious effort to move, and uttered a scream of agony, stabbed through and through by torturing pain.

"Keep still!" said the surgeon pityingly.

Sir Francis heard him not. He wrestled with his bodily anguish till the perspiration stood in large drops on his forehead. He raised himself, gasping for breath, and glared about him like a trapped beast of prey.

"Give me brandy!" he muttered chokingly. "Quick--quick! Are you going to let me die like a dog?--d.a.m.n you all!"

The effort to move,--to speak,--exhausted his sinking strength--his throat rattled,--he clenched his fists and made as though he would spring off his couch--when a fearful contortion convulsed his whole body,--his eyes rolled up and became fixed--he fell heavily back,--_dead_!

Quietly the surgeon covered again what was now nothing,--nothing but a mutilated corpse.

"It's all over!" he announce briefly.

Errington heard these words in sickened silence. All over! Was it possible? So soon? All over!--and he had come too late to punish the would-be ravisher of his wife's honor,--too late! He still held the whip in his hand with which he had meant to chastise that--that distorted, mangled lump of clay yonder, . . . pah! he could not bear to think of it, and he turned away, faint and dizzy. He felt,--rather than saw the staircase,--down which he dreamily went, followed by Lorimer.