Elster's Folly Part 78

"It is some time since I read the play," returned Hartledon, controlling his temper under an a.s.sumption of indifference. "If my memory serves me, the 'funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.'

_My_ late wife has been dead eighteen months, Lady Kirton."

"Eighteen months! for such a wife as Maude was to you!" raved the dowager. "You ought to have mourned her eighteen years. Anybody else would. I wish I had never let you have her."

Lord Hartledon wished it likewise, with all his heart and soul; had wished it in his wife's lifetime.

"Lady Kirton, listen to me! Let us understand each other. Your visit here is ill-timed; you ought to feel it so; nevertheless, if you stay it out, you must observe good manners. I shall be compelled to request you to terminate it if you fail one iota in the respect due to this house's mistress, my beloved and honoured wife."

"Your _beloved_ wife! Do you dare to say it to me?"

"Ay; beloved, honoured and respected as no woman has ever been by me yet, or ever will be again," he replied, speaking too plainly in his warmth.

"What a false-hearted monster!" cried the dowager, shrilly, apostrophizing the walls and the mirrors. "What then was Maude?"

"Maude is gone, and I counsel you not to bring up her name to me," said Val, sternly. "Your treachery forced Maude upon me; and let me tell you now, Lady Kirton, if I have never told you before, that it wrought upon her the most bitter wrong possible to be inflicted; which she lived to learn. I was a vacillating simpleton, and you held me in your trammels.

The less we rake up old matters the better. Things have altered. I am altered. The moral courage I once lacked does not fail me now; and I have at least sufficient to hold my own against the world, and protect from insult the lady I have made my wife. I beg your pardon if my words seem harsh; they are true; and I am sorry you have forced them from me."

She was standing still for a moment, staring at him, not altogether certain of her ground.

"Where are the children?" he asked.

"Where you can't get at them," she rejoined hotly. "You have your beloved wife; you don't want them."

He rang the bell, more loudly than he need have done; but his usually sweet temper was provoked. A footman came in.

"Tell the nurse to bring down the children."

"They are not at home, my lord."

"Not at home! Surely they are not out in this rain!--and so late!"

"They went out this afternoon, my lord: and have not come in, I believe."

"There, that will do," tartly interposed the dowager. "You don't know anything about it, and you may go."

"Lady Kirton, where are the children?"

"Where you can't get at them, I say," was Lady Kirton's response. "You don't think I am going to suffer Maude's children to be domineered over by a wretch of a step-mother--perhaps poisoned."

He confronted her in his wrath, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng.

"Madam!"

"Oh, you need not 'Madam' me. Maude's gone, and I shall act for her."

"I ask you where my children are?"

"I have sent them away; you may make the most of the information. And when I have remained here as long as I choose, I shall take them with me, and keep them, and bring them up. You can at once decide what sum you will allow me for their education and maintenance: two maids, a tutor, a governess, clothes, toys, and pocket-money. It must be a handsome sum, paid quarterly in advance. And I mean to take a house in London for their accommodation, and shall expect you to pay the rent."

The coolness with which this was delivered turned Val's angry feelings into amus.e.m.e.nt. He could not help laughing as he looked at her.

"You cannot have my children, Lady Kirton."

"They are Maude's children," snapped the dowager.

"But I presume you admit that they are likewise mine. And I shall certainly not part with them."

"If you oppose me in this, I'll put them into Chancery," cried the dowager. "I am their nearest relative, and have a right to them."

"Nearest relative!" he repeated. "You must have lost your senses. I am their father."

"And have you lived to see thirty, and never learnt that men don't count for anything in the bringing up of infants?" shrilly asked the dowager.

"If they had ten fathers, what's that to the Lord Chancellor? No more than ten blocks of wood. What they want is a mother."

"And I have now given them one."

Without another word, with the red flush of emotion on his cheek, he went up to his wife's room. She was alone then, dressed, and just coming out of it. He put his arm round her to draw her in again, as he shortly explained the annoyance their visitor was causing him.

"You must stay here, my dearest, until I can go down with you," he added.

"She is in a vile humour, and I do not choose that you should encounter her, unprotected by me."

"But where are you going, Val?"

"Well, I really think I shall get a policeman in, and frighten her into saying what she has done with the children. She'll never tell unless forced into it."

Anne laughed, and Hartledon went down. He had in good truth a great mind to see what the effect would be. The old woman was not a reasonable being, and he felt disposed to show her very little consideration. As he stood at the hall-door gazing forth, who should arrive but Thomas Carr.

Not altogether by accident; he had come up exploring, to see if there were any signs of Val's return.

"Ah! home at last, Hartledon!"

"Carr, what happy wind blew you hither?" cried Val, as he grasped the hands of his trusty friend. "You can terrify this woman with the thunders of the law if she persists in kidnapping children that don't belong to her." And he forthwith explained the state of affairs.

Mr. Carr laughed.

"She will not keep them away long. She is no fool, that countess-dowager.

It is a ruse, no doubt, to induce you to give them up to her."

"Give them up to her, indeed!" Val was beginning, when Hedges advanced to him.

"Mrs. Ball says the children have only gone to Madame Tussaud's, my lord," quoth he. "The nurse told her so when she went out."

"I wish she was herself one of Madame Tussaud's figure-heads!" cried Val.

"Mr. Carr dines here, Hedges. Nonsense, Carr; you can't refuse. Never mind your coat; Anne won't mind. I want you to make acquaintance with her."

"How did you contrive to win over Dr. Ashton?" asked Thomas Carr, as he went in.

"I put the matter before him in its true light," answered Val, "asking him whether, if Anne forgave me, he would condemn us to live out our lives apart from each other: or whether he would not act the part of a good Christian, and give her to me, that I might strive to atone for the past."

"And he did so?"