Foul Play Part 64

She took her candle, and, as she pa.s.sed young Wardlaw, she told him, in a low voice, she would be glad to speak to him alone to-morrow.

"At what hour?" said he eagerly.

"When you like. At one."

And so she retired, leaving him in ecstasies. This was the first downright a.s.signation she had ever made with him.

They met at one o'clock; he radiant as the sun, and a rose in his b.u.t.ton-hole; she sad and somber, and with her very skin twitching at the thought of the explanation she had to go through.

He began with amorous commonplaces; she stopped him, gravely.

"Arthur," said she, "you and I are alone now, and I have a confession to make. Unfortunately, I must cause you pain--terrible pain. Oh, my heart flinches at the wound I am going to give you; but it is my fate either to wound you or to deceive you."

During this preamble, Arthur sat amazed rather than alarmed. He did not interrupt her, though she paused, and would gladly have been interrupted, since an interruption is an a.s.sistance in perplexities.

"Arthur, we suffered great hards.h.i.+ps on the boat, and you would have lost me but for one person. He saved my life again and again; I saved his upon the island. My constancy was subject to trials--oh such trials! So great an example of every manly virtue forever before my eyes! My grat.i.tude and my pity eternally pleading! England and you seemed gone forever. Make excuses for me if you can. Arthur--I--I have formed an attachment."

In making this strange avowal she hung her head and blushed, and the tears ran down her cheeks. But we suspect they ran for _him,_ and not for Arthur.

Arthur turned deadly sick at this tremendous blow, dealt with so soft a hand. At last he gasped out, "If you marry him, you will bury me."

"No, Arthur," said Helen, gently; "I could not marry him, even if you were to permit me. When you know more, you will see that, of us three unhappy ones, you are the least unhappy. But, since this is so, am I wrong to tell you the truth, and leave you to decide whether our engagement ought to continue? Of course, what I have owned to you releases you."

"Releases me! but it does not unbind my heart from yours," cried Arthur, in despair.

Then his hysterical nature came out, and he was so near fainting away that Helen sprinkled water on his temples, and applied eau-de-cologne to his nostrils, and murmured, "Poor, poor Arthur! Oh, was I born only to afflict those I esteem?"

He saw her with the tears of pity in her eyes, and he caught her hand, and said, "You were always the soul of honor; keep faith with me, and I will cure you of that unhappy attachment."

"What! Do you hold me to my engagement after what I have told you?"

"Cruel Helen! you know I have not the power to hold you."

"I am not cruel; and you have the power. But oh, think! For your own sake, not mine."

"I have thought; and this attachment to a man you cannot marry is a mere misfortune--yours as well as mine. Give me your esteem until your love comes back, and let our engagement continue."

"It was for you to decide," said Helen, coldly, "and you have decided.

There is one condition I must ask you to submit to."

"I submit to it."

"What, before you hear it?"

"Helen, you don't know what a year of misery I have endured, ever since the report came of your death. My happiness is cruelly dashed now, but still it is great happiness by comparison. Make your conditions. You are my queen, as well as my love and my life."

Helen hesitated. It shocked her delicacy to lower the man she had consented to marry.

"Oh, Helen," said Arthur, "anything but secrets between you and me. Go on as you have begun, and let me know the worst at once."

"Can you be very generous, Arthur?--generous to him who has caused you so much pain?"

"I'll try," said Arthur, with a groan.

"I would not marry him, unless you gave me up. For I am your betrothed, and you are true to me. I _could_ not marry him, even if I were not pledged to you; but it so happens, I can do him one great service without injustice to you; and this service I have vowed to do before I marry. I shall keep that vow, as I keep faith with you. He has been driven from society by a foul slander; that slander I am to sift and confute. It will be long and difficult; but I shall do it; and you could help me if you chose. But that I will not be so cruel as to ask."

Arthur bit his lip with jealous rage; but he was naturally cunning, and his cunning showed him there was at present but one road to Helen's heart. He quelled his torture as well as he could, and resolved to take that road. He reflected a moment, and then he said:

"If you succeed in that, will you marry me next day?"

"I will, upon my honor."

"Then I will help you."

"Arthur, think what you say. Women have loved as unselfishly as this; but no man, that ever I heard of."

"No man ever did love a woman as I love you. Yes, I would rather help you, though with a sore heart, than hold aloof from you. What have we to do together?"

"Did I not tell you?--to clear his character of a foul stigma, and restore him to England, and to the world which he is so fitted to adorn."

"Yes, yes," said Arthur; "but who is it? Why do I ask, though? He must be a stranger to me."

"No stranger at all," said Helen; "but one who is almost as unjust to you as the world has been to him;" then, fixing her eyes full on him, she said, "Arthur, it is your old friend and tutor, Robert Penfold."

CHAPTER LV.

ARTHUR WARDLAW was thunderstruck; and for some time sat stupidly staring at her. And to this blank gaze succeeded a look of abject terror, which seemed to her strange and beyond the occasion. But this was not all; for, after glaring at her with scared eyes and ashy cheeks a moment or two, he got up and literally staggered out of the room without a word.

He had been taken by surprise, and, for once, all his arts had failed him.

Helen, whose eyes had never left his face, and had followed his retiring figure, was frightened at the weight of the blow she had struck; and strange thoughts and conjectures filled her mind. Hitherto, she had felt sure Robert Penfold was under a delusion as to Arthur Wardlaw, and that his suspicions were as unjust as they certainly were vague. Yet now, at the name of Robert Penfold, Arthur turned pale, and fled like a guilty thing. This was a coincidence that confirmed her good opinion of Robert Penfold, and gave her ugly thoughts of Arthur. Still, she was one very slow to condemn a friend, and too generous and candid to condemn on suspicion; so she resolved as far as possible to suspend her unfavorable judgment of Arthur, until she should have asked him why this great emotion, and heard his reply.

Moreover, she was no female detective, but a pure creature bent on clearing innocence. The object of her life was, not to discover the faults of Arthur Wardlaw, or any other person, but to clear Robert Penfold of a crime. Yet Arthur's strange behavior was a great shock to her; for here, at the very outset, he had somehow made her feel she must hope for no a.s.sistance from him. She sighed at this check, and asked herself to whom she should apply first for aid. Robert had told her to see his counsel, his solicitor, his father, and Mr. Undercliff, an expert, and to sift the whole matter.

Not knowing exactly where to begin, she thought she would, after all, wait a day or two to give Arthur time to recover himself, and decide calmly whether he would co-operate with her or not.

In this trying interval, she set up a diary--for the first time in her life; for she was no egotist. And she noted down what we have just related, only in a very condensed form, and wrote at the margin: _Mysterious._

Arthur never came near her for two whole days. This looked grave. On the third day she said to General Rolleston:

"Papa, _you_ will help me in the good cause--will you not?"

He replied that he would do what he could, but feared that would be little.

"Will you take me down to Elmtrees, this morning?"