Elster's Folly

"No, it wouldn't. I left the spot before the accident could have happened; and I came back to Calne with a witness. As to the death having been something worse than accident, not a soul in the place has dreamt of such a thing except me."

"Except you! What do you mean?"

Pike leaned more over the hurdles, so as to bring his disreputable face closer to Mr. Gum, who slightly recoiled as he caught the low whisper.

"I don't think the death was accidental. I believe his lordship was just put out of the way quietly."

"Heaven forbid!" exclaimed the shocked clerk. "By whom? By you?" he added, in his bewilderment.

"No," returned the man. "If I'd done it, I shouldn't talk about it."

"What do you mean?" cried Mr. Gum.

"I mean that I have my suspicions; and good suspicions they are. Many a man has been hung on less. I am not going to tell them; perhaps not ever. I shall wait and keep my eyes open, and bring them, if I can, to certainties. Time enough to talk then, or keep silent, as circumstances may dictate."

"And you tell me you were not near the place at the time of the accident?"

"I wasn't," replied Mr. Pike, with emphasis.

"Who was?"

"That's my secret. And as I've a little matter of business on hand to-night, I don't care to be further delayed, if it's all the same to you, neighbour. And instead of your accusing me of prowling about the mill again, perhaps you'll just give a thought occasionally to what I have now said, keeping it to yourself. I'm not afraid of your spreading it in Calne; for it might bring a hornets' nest about your head, and about some other heads that you wouldn't like to injure."

With the last words Mr. Pike crossed the hurdles and went off in the direction of Hartledon. It was a light night, and the clerk stood and stared after him. To say that Jabez Gum in his astonishment was uncertain whether he stood on his head or his heels, would be saying little; and how much of these assertions he might believe, and what mischief Mr. Pike might be going after to-night, he knew not. Drawing a long sigh, which did not sound very much like a sigh of relief, he at length turned off to Dr. Ashton's, and the man disappeared.

We must follow Pike. He went stealthily up the road past Hartledon, keeping in the shade of the hedge, and shrinking into it when he saw any one coming. Striking off when he neared the mill, he approached it cautiously, and halted amidst some trees, whence he had a view of the mill-door.

He was waiting for the boy, David Ripper. Fully convinced by the lad's manner at the inquest that he had not told all he knew, but was keeping something back in fear, Mr. Pike, for reasons of his own, resolved to come at it if he could. He knew that the boy would be at work later than usual that night, having been hindered in the afternoon.

Imagine yourself standing with your back to the river, reader, and take a view of the premises as they face you. The cottage is a square building, and has four good rooms on the ground floor. The miller's thrifty wife generally locked all these rooms up if she went out, and carried the keys away in her pocket. The parlour window was an ordinary sash-window, with outside shutters; the kitchen window a small casement, protected by a fixed net-work of strong wire. No one could get in or out, even when the casement was open, without tearing this wire away, which would not be a difficult matter to accomplish. On the left of the cottage, but to your right as you face it, stands the mill, to which you ascend by steps. It communicates inside with the upper floor of the cottage, which is used as a store-room for corn; and from this store-room a flight of stairs descends to the kitchen below. Another flight of stairs from this store-room communicated with the open passage leading from the back-door to the stable. This is all that need be said: and you may think it superfluous to have described it at all: but it is not so.

The boy Ripper at length came forth. With a shuddering avoidance of the water he came tearing along as one running from a ghost, and was darting past the trees, when he found himself detained by an arm of great strength. Mr. Pike clapped his other hand upon the boy's mouth, stifling a howl of terror.

"Do you see this, Rip?" cried he.

Rip did see it. It was a pistol held rather inconveniently close to the boy's breast. Rip dearly loved his life; but it nearly went out of him then with fear.

"Now," said Pike, "I've come up to know about this business of Lord Hartledon's, and I will know it, or leave you as dead as he is. And I'll have you took up for murder, into the bargain," he rather illogically continued, "as an accessory to the fact."

David Ripper was in a state of horror; all idea of concealment gone out of him. "I couldn't help it," he gasped. "I couldn't get out to him; I was locked up in the mill. Don't shoot me."

"I'll spare you on one condition," decided Pike. "Disclose the whole of this from first to last, and then we may part friends. But try to palm off one lie upon me, and I'll riddle you through. To begin with: what brought you locked up in the mill?"

It was a wicked tale of a wicked young jail-bird, as Mr. Pike (probably the worse jail-bird by far of the two) phrased it. Master Ripper had purposely caused himself to be locked in the mill, his object being to supply himself with as much corn as he could carry about him for the benefit of his rabbits and pigeons and other live stock at home. He had done it twice before, he avowed, in dread of the pistol, and had got away safe through the square hole in the passage at the foot of the back staircase, whence he had dropped to the ground. To his consternation on this occasion, however, he had found the door at the foot of the stairs bolted, as it never had been before, and he could not get to the passage. So he was a prisoner all the afternoon, and had exercised his legs between the store-room and kitchen, both of which were open to him.

If ever a man showed virtuous indignation at a sinner's confession, Mr. Pike showed it now. "That's how you were about in the stubble-field setting your traps, you young villain! I saw the coroner look at you. And now about Lord Hartledon. What did you see?"

Master Ripper rubbed the perspiration from his face as he went on with his tale. Pike listened with all the ears he possessed and said not a word, beyond sundry rough exclamations, until the tale was done.

"You awful young dog! You saw all that from the kitchen-window, and never tried to get out of it!"

"I couldn't get out of it," pleaded the boy. "It's got a wire-net before it, and I couldn't break that."

"You are strong enough to break it ten times over," retorted Pike.

"But then master would ha' known I'd been in the mill!" cried the boy, a gleam of cunning in his eyes.

"Ugh," grunted Pike. "And you saw exactly what you've told me?"

"I saw it and heard the cries."

"Did he see you?"

"No; I was afeard to show myself. When master come home, the first thing he did was t' unlock that there staircase door, and I got out without his seeing me—"

"Where did you hide the grain you were loaded with?" demanded Pike.

"I'd emptied it out again in the store-room," returned the boy. "I told master there were a loose skiff out there, and he come out and secured it. Them harvesters come up next and got him out of the water."

"Yes, you could see fast enough what you were looking for! Well, young Rip," continued Mr. Pike, consolingly, "you stand about as rich a chance of being hanged as ever you'll stand in all your born days. If you'd jumped through that wire you'd have saved my lord, and he'd have made it right for you with old Floyd. I'd advise you to keep a silent tongue in your head, if you want to save your neck."

"I was keeping it, till you come and made me tell with that there pistol," howled the boy. "You won't go and split on me?" he asked, with trembling lips.

"I won't split on you about the grain," graciously promised Pike. "It's no business of mine. As to the other matter—well, I'll not say anything about that; at any rate, yet awhile. You keep it a secret; so will I."

Without another word, Pike extended his hand as a signal that the culprit was at liberty to depart; and he did so as fast as his legs would carry him. Pike then returned the pistol to his pocket and took his way back to Calne in a thoughtful and particularly ungenial mood. There was a doubt within him whether the boy had disclosed the truth, even to him.

Perhaps on no one—with the exception of Percival—did the death of Lord Hartledon leave its effects as it did on Lady Kirton and her daughter Maude. To the one it brought embarrassment; to the other, what seemed very like a broken heart. The countess-dowager's tactics must change as by magic. She had to transfer the affection and consideration evinced for Edward Lord Hartledon to his brother; and to do it easily and naturally. She had to obliterate from the mind of the latter her overbearing dislike to him, cause her insults to be remembered no more. A difficult task, even for her, wily woman as she was.

How was it to be done? For three long hours the night after Lord Hartledon's death, she lay awake, thinking out her plans; perhaps for the first time in her life, for obtuse natures do not lie awake. The death had affected her only as regarded her own interests; she could feel for none and regret none in her utter selfishness. One was fallen, but another had risen up. "Le roi est mort: vive le roi!"

On the day following the death she had sought an interview with Percival. Never a woman evinced better tact than she. There was no violent change in her manner, no apologies for the past, or display of sudden affection. She spoke quietly and sensibly of passing topics: the death, and what could have led to it; the immediate business on hand, some of the changes it entailed in the future. "I'll stay with you still, Percival," she said, "and look after things a bit for you, as I have been doing for your brother. It is an awful shock, and we must all have time to get over it. If I had only foreseen this, how I might have spared my temper and poor Maude's feelings!"

She looked out of the corner of her eye at the young man; but he betrayed no curiosity to hear more, and she went on unasked.

"You know, Val, for a portionless girl, as Maude is, it was a great blow to me when I found her fixing her heart upon a younger son. How cross and unjust it made me I couldn't conceal: mothers are mothers. I wanted her to take a fancy to Hartledon, dear fellow, and I suppose she could not, and it rendered me cross; and I know I worried her and worried my own temper, till at times I was not conscious of what I said. Poor Maude! she did not rebel openly, but I could see her struggles. Only a week ago, when Hartledon was talking about his marrying sometime, and hinting that she might care fox him if she tried, she scored her beautiful drawing all over with ugly marks; ran the pencil through it—"

"But why do you tell me this now?" asked Val.

"Hartledon—dear me! I wonder how long I shall be getting accustomed to your name?—there's only you and me and Maude left now of the family," cried the dowager; "and if I speak of such things, it is in fulness of heart. And now about these letters: do you care how they are worded?"

"I don't seem to care about anything," listlessly answered the young man. "As to the letters, I think I'd rather write them myself, Lady Kirton."

"Indeed you shall not have any trouble of that sort to-day. I'll write the letters, and you may indulge yourself in doing nothing."

He yielded in his unstable nature. She spoke of business letters, and it was better that he should write them; he wished to write them; but she carried her point, and his will yielded to hers. Would it be a type of the future?—would he yield to her in other things in defiance of his better judgment? Alas! alas!

She picked up her skirts and left him, and went sailing upstairs to her daughter's room. Maude was sitting shivering in a shawl, though the day was hot.

"I've paved the way," nodded the old woman, in meaning tones. "And there's one fortunate thing about Val: he is so truthful himself, one may take him in with his eyes open."

Maude turned her eyes upon her mother: very languid and unspeculative eyes just then.

"I gave him a hint, Maude, that you had been unable to bring yourself to like Hartledon, but had fixed your mind on a younger son. Later, we'll let him suspect who the younger son was."

The words aroused Maude; she started up and stood staring at her mother, her eyes dilating with a sort of horror; her pale cheeks slowly turning crimson.

"I don't understand," she gasped; "I hope I don't understand. You—you do not mean that I am to try to like Val Elster?"

"Now, Maude, no heroics. I'll not see you make a fool of yourself as your sisters have done. He's not Val Elster any longer; he is Lord Hartledon: better-looking than ever his brother was, and will make a better husband, for he'll be more easily led."

"I would not marry Val for the whole world," she said, with strong emotion. "I dislike him; I hate him; I never could be a wife to Val Elster."

"We'll see," said the dowager, pushing up her front, of which she had just caught sight in a glass.

"Thank Heaven, there's no fear of it!" resumed Maude, collecting her senses, and sitting down again with a relieved sigh; "he is to marry Anne Ashton. Thank Heaven that he loves her!"

"Anne Ashton!" scornfully returned the countess-dowager. "She might have been tolerated when he was Val Elster, not now he is Lord Hartledon. What notions you have, Maude!"

Maude burst into tears. "Mamma, I think it is fearfully indecent for you to begin upon these things already! It only happened last night, and—and it sounds quite horrible."

"When one has to live as I do, one has to do many things decent and indecent," retorted the countess-dowager sharply. "He has had his hint, and you've got yours: and you are no true girl if you suffer yourself now to be triumphed over by Anne Ashton."

Maude cried on silently, thinking how cruel fate was to have taken one brother and spared the other. Who—save Anne Ashton—would have missed Val Elster; while Lord Hartledon—at least he had made the life of one heart. A poor bruised heart now; never, never to be made quite whole again.

Thus the dowager, in her blindness, began her plans. In her blindness! If we could only foresee the ending of some of the unholy schemes that many of us are apt to weave, we might be more willing to leave them humbly in a higher Hand than ours. Do they ever bring forth good, these plans, born of our evil passions—hatred, malice, utter selfishness? I think not. They may seem to succeed triumphantly, but—watch the triumph to the end.

CHAPTER XIII.

FEVER

The dews of an October evening were falling upon Calne, as Lord Hartledon walked from the railway-station. Just as unexpectedly as he had arrived the morning you first saw him, when he was only Val Elster, had he arrived now. By the merest accident one of the Hartledon servants happened to be at the station when the train arrived, and took charge of his master's luggage.

"All well at home, James?"

"All quite well, my lord."

Several weeks had elapsed since his brother's death, and Lord Hartledon had spent them in London. He went up on business the week after the funeral, and did not return again. In one respect he had no inducement to return; for the Ashtons, including Anne, were on a visit in Wales. They were at home now, as he knew well; and perhaps that had brought him down.

He went in unannounced, finding his way to the inner drawing-room. A large fire blazed in the grate, and Lady Maude sat by it so intent in thought as not to observe his entrance. She wore a black crêpe dress, with a little white trimming on its low body and sleeves. The firelight played on her beautiful features; and her eyelashes glistened as if with tears: she was thinner and paler; he saw it at once. The countess-dowager kept to Hartledon and showed no intention of moving from it: she and her daughter had been there alone all these weeks.

"How are you, Maude?"

She looked round and started up, backing from him with a face of alarm. Ah, was it instinct caused her so to receive him? What, or who, was she thinking of; holding her hands before her with that face of horror?

"Maude, have I so startled you?"

"Percival! I beg your pardon. I believe I was thinking of—of your brother, and I really did not know you in the uncertain light. We don't have the rooms lighted early," she added, with a little laugh.

He took her hands in his. Now that she knew him, and the alarm was over, she seemed really pleased to see him: the dark eyes were raised to his with a frank smile.

"May I take a cousin's greeting, Maude?"

Without waiting for yes or no, he stooped and took the kiss. Maude flung his hands away. He should have left out the "cousin," or not have taken the kiss.

He went and stood with his elbow on the mantelpiece, soberly, as if he had only kissed a sister. Maude sat down again.

"Why did you not send us word you were coming?" she asked.

"There was no necessity for it. And I only made my mind up this morning."

"What a long time you have been away! I thought you went for a week."

"I did not get my business over very quickly; and waited afterwards to see Thomas Carr, who was out of town. The Ashtons were away, you know; so I had no inducement to hurry back again."

"Very complimentary to her. Who's Thomas Carr?" asked Maude.

"A barrister; the greatest friend I possess in this world. We were at college together, and he used to keep me straight."

"Keep you straight! Val!"

"It's quite true. I went to him in all my scrapes and troubles. He is the most honourable, upright, straightforward man I know; and, as such, possesses a talent for serving—"

"Hartledon! Is it you?"

The interruption came from the dowager. She and the butler came in together, both looking equally astonished at the appearance of Lord Hartledon. The former said dinner was served.

"Will you let me sit down in this coat?" asked Val.

The countess-dowager would willingly have allowed him to sit down without any. Her welcome was demonstrative; her display of affection quite warm, and she called him "Val," tenderly. He escaped for a minute to his room, washed his hands, brushed his hair, and was down again, and taking the head of his own table.

It was pleasant to have him there—a welcome change from Hartledon's recent monotony; and even Maude, with her boasted dislike, felt prejudice melting away. Boasted dislike, not real, it had been. None could dislike Percival. He was not Edward, and it was him Maude had loved. Percival she never would love, but she might learn to like him. As he sat near her, in his plain black morning attire, courteous, genuinely sweet-tempered, his good looks conspicuous, a smile on his delicate, refined, but vacillating lips, and his honest dark-blue eyes bent upon her in kindness, Maude for the first time admitted a vision of the possible future, together with a dim consciousness that it might not be intolerable. Half the world, of her age and sex, would have deemed it indeed a triumph to be made the wife of that attractive man.

He had cautiously stood aside for Lady Kirton to take the head of the table; but the dowager had positively refused, and subsided into the chair at the foot. She did not fill it in dear Edward's time, she said; neither should she in dear Val's; he had come home to occupy his own place. And oh, thank goodness he was come! She and Maude had been so lonely and miserable, growing thinner daily from sheer ennui. So she faced Lord Hartledon at the end of the table, her flaxen curls surmounted by an array of black plumes, and looking very like a substantial female mute.

"What an awful thing that is about the Rectory!" exclaimed she, when they were more than half through dinner.

Lord Hartledon looked up quietly. "What is the matter at the Rectory?"

"Fever has broken out."

"Is that all!" he exclaimed, some amusement on his face. "I thought it must have taken fire."

"A fever's worse than a fire."

"Do you think so?"

"Think so!" echoed the dowager. "You can run away from a fire; but a fever may take you before you are aware of it. Every soul in the Rectory may die; it may spread to the parish; it may spread here. I have kept tar burning outside the house the last two days."

"You are not serious, Lady Kirton!"

"I am serious. I wouldn't catch a fever for the whole world. I should die of fright before it had time to kill me. Besides—I have Maude to guard. You were forgetting her."

"There's no danger at all. One of the servants became ill after they returned home, and it proved to be fever. I don't suppose it will spread."

"How did you hear about it?"

"From Miss Ashton. She mentioned it in her last letter to me."

"I didn't know you corresponded with her," cried the dowager, her tones rather shrill.

"Not correspond with Miss Ashton!" he repeated. "Of course I do."

The old dowager had a fit of choking: something had gone the wrong way, she said. Lord Hartledon resumed.

"It is an awful shame of those seaside lodging-house people! Did you hear the particulars, Maude? After the Ashtons concluded their visit in Wales, they went for a fortnight to the seaside, on their way home, taking lodgings. Some days after they had been settled in the rooms they discovered that some fever was in the house; a family who occupied another set of apartments being ill with it, and had been ill before the Ashtons went in. Dr. Ashton told the landlady what he thought of her conduct, and then they left the house for home. But Mrs. Ashton's maid, Matilda, had already taken it."

"Did Miss Ashton give you these particulars?" asked Maude, toying with a late rose that lay beside her plate.

"Yes. I should feel inclined to prosecute the woman, were I Dr. Ashton, for having been so wickedly inconsiderate. But I hope Matilda is better, and that the alarm will end with her. It is four days since I had Anne's letter."

"Then, Lord Hartledon, I can tell you the alarm's worse, and another has taken it, and the parish is up in arms," said the countess-dowager, tartly. "It has proved to be fever of a most malignant type, and not a soul but Hillary the surgeon goes near the Rectory, You must not venture within half-a-mile of it. Dr. Ashton was so careless as to occupy his pulpit on Sunday; but, thank goodness, I did not venture to church, or allow Maude to go. Your Miss Ashton will be having it next."

"Of course they have advice from Garchester?" he exclaimed.

"How should I know? My opinion is that the parson himself might be prosecuted for bringing the fever into a healthy neighbourhood. Port, Hedges! One has need of a double portion of tonics in a time like this."

The countess-dowager's alarms were not feigned—no, nor exaggerated. She had an intense, selfish fear of any sort of illness; she had a worse fear of death. In any time of public epidemic her terrors would have been almost ludicrous in their absurdity but that they were so real. And she "fortified" herself against infection by eating and drinking more than ever.

Nothing else was said: she shunned allusion to it when she could: and presently she and Maude left the dining-room. "You won't be long, Hartledon?" she observed, sweetly, as she passed him. Val only bowed in answer, closed the door upon them, and rang for Hedges.

"Is there much alarm regarding this fever at the Rectory?" he asked of the butler.

"Not very much, I think, my lord. A few are timid about it; as is always the case. One of the other servants has taken it; but Mr. Hillary told me when he was here this morning that he hoped it would not spread beyond the Rectory."

"Was Hillary here this morning? Nobody's ill?" asked Lord Hartledon, quickly.

"No one at all, my lord. The countess-dowager sent for him, to ask what her diet had better be, and how she could guard against infection more effectually than she was doing. She did not allow him to come in, but spoke to him from one of the upper windows, with a cloak and respirator on."

Lord Hartledon looked at his butler; the man was suppressing a grim smile.