Elster's Folly Part 65

"What could mamma mean?" she asked. "I shall ask her."

"Maude, oblige me by saying nothing about it. I have already warned Lady Kirton that it must not be repeated; and I am sure it will not be. I wish you would also oblige me in another matter."

"In anything," she eagerly said, raising her tearful eyes to his. "Ask me anything."

"I intend to take your brother to the warmest seaside place England can boast of, at once; to-day or to-morrow. The sea-air may do me good also.

I want that, or something else," he added; his tone a.s.suming a sad weariness as he remembered how futile any "sea-air" would be for a mind diseased. "Won't you go with us, Maude?"

"Oh yes, gladly! I will go with you anywhere."

He left her to proceed to Captain Kirton's room, thinking that he and his wife might have been happy together yet, but for that one awful shadow of the past, which she did not know anything about; and he prayed she never might know.

But after all, it would have been a very moonlight sort of happiness.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

ONCE MORE.

The months rolled on, and Lord and Lady Hartledon did not separate. They remained together, and were, so far, happy enough--the moonlight happiness hinted at; and it is as I believe, the best and calmest sort of happiness for married life. Maude's temper was unequal, and he was subject to prolonged hours of sadness. But the time went lightly enough over their heads, for all the world saw, as it goes over the heads of most people.

And Lord Hartledon was a free man still, and stood well with the world.

Whatever the mysterious accusation brought against him had been, it produced no noisy effects as yet; in popular phrase, it had come to nothing. As yet; always as yet. Whether he had shot a man, or robbed a bank, or fired a church, the incipient accusation died away. But the fear, let it be of what nature it would, never died away in his mind; and he lived as a man with a sword suspended over his head. Moreover, the sword, in his own imagination, was slipping gradually from its fastenings; his days were restless, his nights sleepless, an inward fever for ever consumed him.

As none knew better than Thomas Carr. There were two witnesses who could bring the facts home to Lord Hartledon; and, so far as was known, only two: the stranger, who had paid him a visit, and the man Gordon, or Gorton. The latter was the more dangerous; and they had not yet been able to trace him. Mr. Carr's friend, Detective Green, had furnished that gentleman with a descriptive bill of Gordon of the mutiny: "a young, slight man, with light eyes and fair hair." This did not answer exactly to the Gorton who had played his part at Calne; but then, in regard to the latter, there remained the suspicion that the red hair was false.

Whether it was the same man or whether it was two men--if the phrase may be allowed--neither of them, to use Detective Green's expressive words, turned up. And thus the months had pa.s.sed on, with nothing special to mark them. Captain Kirton had been conveyed abroad for the winter, and they had good news of him; and the countess-dowager was inflicting a visit upon one of her married daughters in Germany, the baroness with the unp.r.o.nounceable name.

And the matter had nearly faded from the mind of Lady Hartledon. It would quite have faded, but for certain interviews with Thomas Carr at his chambers, when Hartledon's look of care precluded the idea that they could be visits of mere idleness or pleasure; and for the secret trouble that unmistakably sat on her husband like an incubus. At times he would moan in his sleep as one in pain; but if told of this, had always some laughing answer ready for her--he had dreamed he was fighting a lion or being tossed by a bull.

This was the pleasantest phase of Lady Hartledon's married life. Her health did not allow of her entering into gaiety; and she and her husband pa.s.sed their time happily together. All her worst qualities seemed to have left her, or to be dormant; she was yielding and gentle; her beauty had never been so great as now that it was subdued; her languor was an attraction, her care to please being genuine; and they were sufficiently happy. They were in their town-house now, not having gone back to Hartledon. A large, handsome house, very different from the hired one they had first occupied.

In January the baby was born; and Maude's eyes glistened with tears of delight because it was a boy: a little heir to the broad lands of Hartledon. She was very well, and it seemed that she could never tire of fondling her child.

But in the first few days succeeding that of the birth a strange fancy took possession of her: she observed, or thought she observed, that her husband did not seem to care for the child. He did not caress it; she once heard him sighing over it; and he never announced it in the newspapers. Other infants, heirs especially, could be made known to the world, but not hers. The omission might never have come to her knowledge, since at first she was not allowed to see newspapers, but for a letter from the countess-dowager. The lady wrote in a high state of wrath from Germany; she had looked every day for ten days in the _Times_, and saw no chronicle of the happy event; and she demanded the reason. It afforded a valve for her temper, which had been in an explosive state for some time against Lord Hartledon, that ungracious son-in-law having actually forbidden her his house until Maude's illness should be over; telling her plainly that he would not have his wife worried. Lady Hartledon said nothing for a day or two; she was watching her husband; watching for signs of the fancy which had taken possession of her.

He was in her room one dark afternoon, standing with his elbow on the mantelpiece whilst he talked to her: a room of luxury and comfort it must have been almost a pleasure to be ill in. Lady Hartledon had been allowed to get up, and sit in an easy-chair: she seemed to be growing strong rapidly; and the little red gentleman in the cradle, sleeping quietly, was fifteen days old.

"About his name, Percival; what is it to be?" she asked. "Your own?"

"No, no, not mine," said he, quickly; "I never liked mine. Choose some other, Maude."

"What do you wish it to be?"

"Anything."

The short answer did not please the young mother; neither did the dreamy tone in which it was spoken. "Don't you care what it is?" she asked rather plaintively.

"Not much, for myself. I wish it to be anything you shall choose."

"I thought perhaps you would have liked it named after your brother," she said, very much offended on the baby's account.

"George?"

"George, no. I never knew George; I should not be likely to think of him.

Edward."

Lord Hartledon looked at the fire, absently pus.h.i.+ng back his hair. "Yes, let it be Edward. It will do as well as anything else."

"Good gracious, Percival, one would think you had been having babies all your life!" she exclaimed resentfully. "'Do as well as anything else!' If he were our tenth son, instead of our first, you could not treat it with more indifference. I have done nothing but deliberate on the name since he was born; and I don't believe you have once given it a thought."

Lord Hartledon turned his face upon her; and when illumined with a smile, as now, it could be as bright as before care came to it. "I don't think we men attach the importance to names in a general way that you do, Maude. I shall like to have it Edward."

"Edward William Algernon--"

"No, no, no," as if the number alarmed him. "Pray don't have a string of names: one's quite enough."

"Oh, very well," she returned, biting her lips. "William was your father's name. Algernon is my eldest brother's: I supposed you might like them. I thought," she added, after a pause, "we might ask Lord Kirton to be its G.o.dfather."

"I have decided on the G.o.dfathers already. Thomas Carr will be one, and I intend to be the other."

"Thomas Carr! A poor hard-working barrister, that not a soul knows, and of no family or influence whatever, G.o.dfather to the future Lord Hartledon!" uttered the offended mother.

"I wish it, Maude. Carr is the most valued friend I have in the world, or ever can have. Oblige me in this."

"Then my brother can be the other."

"No; I myself; and I wish you would be its G.o.dmother."

"Well, it's quite reversing the order of things!" she said, tacitly conceding the point.

A silence ensued. The firelight played on the lace curtains of the baby's bed, as it did on Lady Hartledon's face; a thoughtful face just now.

Twilight was drawing on, and the fire lighted the room.

"Percival, do you care for the child?"

The tone had a sound of pa.s.sion in it, breaking upon the silence. Lord Hartledon lifted his bent face and glanced at his wife.

"Do I care for the child, Maude? What a question! I do care for him: more than I allow to appear."

And if her voice had pa.s.sion in it, his had pain. He crossed the room, and stood looking down on the sleeping baby, touching at length its cheek with his finger. He could have knelt, there and then, and wept over the child, and prayed, oh, how earnestly, that G.o.d would take it to Himself, not suffer it to live. Many and many a prayer had ascended from his heart in their earlier married days, that his wife might not bear him children; for he could only entail upon them an inheritance of shame.

"I don't think you have once taken him in your arms, Percival; you never kiss him. It's quite unnatural."

"I give my kisses in the dark," he laughed, as he returned to where she was sitting. And this was in a sense true; for once when he happened to be alone for an instant with the baby, he had clasped it and kissed it in a sort of delirious agony.