A Manifest Destiny Part 15

It sounded strange to her, unlike the tap of any messenger or servant who had ever come to her house.

She got up, leaving the door of the sitting-room open that the light might enter the dark hall.

Then, most unaccountably, a sense of fear, very unusual to her, seemed to possess her. She stood still a moment in the hall and waited.

The knock was repeated, so near this time that it made her start. She was not naturally a timid woman, but she felt a sense of physical fear which was totally unreasoning. What harm was likely to come to her from such a source? She compelled herself to go forward and open the door.

It was very dark outside, and she vaguely distinguished the outline of a tall man standing before her. The light from the open door at her back threw out her figure in distinct relief, and it was evident that she had been recognized, for a voice said, in low but distinct tones,

"Lady Hurdly."

She gave a cry and pressed both hands against her breast, sharply drawing in her breath. Then she took a few steps backward, throwing out one hand to support herself against the wall.

"Forgive me," said the well-known voice--the voice out of all the world to which her blood-beats answered. "I have come on you too suddenly. I ought to have written and asked permission to call. I should have done so, only I feared you might deny me."

Somehow the door was closed behind them and they had made their way into the lighted room. Bettina, still pale and breathless, began to murmur some excuses.

"I beg your pardon; I was frightened. Nora had gone out, and I was all alone. I did not know who it might be. I never have visitors, and I was afraid to open the door."

He was looking at her keenly.

"You should not be alone like this," he said, both resentment and indignation in his tone. "Why do you never have visitors? Why did Nora leave you? Where are the other servants?"

"There are no others. There is only Nora," she said, recovering herself a little. "I let her go to church to-night. I am not usually afraid. Why should I be? Perhaps I am not very well." As she uttered these incoherent sentences she sank into a chair and he took one near her.

The expression of his face had changed from anxiety to a stern sadness.

"And you live alone like this," he said, "without proper service or protection? And, in spite of all that I could say and do, you will not take the miserable pittance which is your own, and which is wasted there in the bank, where it can avail for no one? Do you think this is right to yourself--or kind to me?"

The quiet reproach of his tone disturbed her.

"I do not mean to be unkind," she said, her voice not quite steady, "and indeed I have all that I need. Nora has more than time to attend to me, and as for company, it is because I do not want it that I do not have it."

"And you think you can live without companions.h.i.+p?" he said. "You will find you are mistaken; but of that I have no right to speak.

There is one subject, however, on which I do claim this right, and it is the fulfilment of this purpose which has brought me to America."

"You came all this way to see me?" she said, lifting her brows as if in gentle deprecation. "You were always kind." Her voice broke and she said no more.

"It is not a question of kindness," he said. "It is a matter of the simplest right and duty. Will you hear me? Are you able to hear me to-night, or shall I come again to-morrow?"

"Speak now," she said. "I am perfectly well, and am ready to hear whatever you may have to say."

Her voice gave proof of a recovered self-control. The necessity of making this a final interview between them was borne in upon her, and sitting very still and erect, with her hands clasped tightly together, she waited to hear what he might say.

"Your leaving England so suddenly," he began, "was, as I need not say, a disappointment to me. I had hoped to change your mind and purpose concerning the acceptance not only of money which is your own by legal right, but of such as is also yours by every rational law of possession. It was to me an insupportable idea that you should go away without the means of living as becomes your rank and station."

Bettina, with a rather chill smile, shook her head.

"Rank and station I have none," she said. "I have money enough to live as becomes my mother's child; that I am, and no more. It is the only bond to the past which I acknowledge. The name and t.i.tle which I bore a little while were never mine in a real and true sense. I do not care to speak of it; it is all past; but the very fact that your cousin saw fit to leave me with what you call a mere pittance shows that he felt the distance, the lack of union, between us, as I felt and feel it."

It was a relief to her to say this much. He could gather nothing from it, and she wanted him to know that she had freed her soul from every vestige of its bondage to the man whom she chose to designate as his cousin rather than by any relations.h.i.+p to herself--even a past one. This point did not escape him.

"It is with humiliation that I receive your reminder that that man was, in flesh and blood at least, akin to me," was the answer; "and for that reason I have felt it to be my duty to make whatever poor reparation may be in my power for the evil that he has done."

He spoke with extreme seriousness, and there was a tone in his last words which conveyed to Bettina the suspicion that they referred to something more than any act of Lord Hurdly's which had heretofore been mentioned between them.

She waited, therefore, in some agitation to hear what his next words should be.

"I shall have to ask your forgiveness," he said, "for touching upon a matter which might well seem to be an impertinence on my part. The necessity is forced upon me, however, and I shall be as brief as possible, if you will be good enough to listen."

Bettina answered merely by a bend of the head.

"As long as I can remember," he began, "I have had a certain instinctive distrust of the late Lord Hurdly. It grew with my growth; but I never thought it proper, under the then existing circ.u.mstances, to give expression to it. As time went on, observation confirmed instinct, and it became evident to me that he was a man of powerful will, and was more or less unscrupulous in the attainment of its ends. After his death, in going into the affairs of the estate, and various other matters which came under my observation, I found that the truths laid bare before me revealed him as a far worse man even than I had imagined. It was a revolting manifestation in every sense; but even when those matters had been closed up--when I supposed that I was done with the man and aware of the worst--a revelation was made to me which, though of a piece with the rest, and no worse in its essence and kind, came home to me with a thousandfold intensity, from the fact that it nearly concerned both myself and you."

Bettina's heart beat wildly. She dared not look at him, and with an instinct to protect herself from betrayal at every cost, she said, in a voice which was so cool and calm that the sound of it surprised her as it fell upon her ear:

"Go on. Explain yourself."

She had taken up a paper from the table and was using it as if to screen her face from the fire, but she managed to get somewhat in the shadow of it, so that her companion had only a partial view of her features and expression. In this position, with her eyes bent upon the fire, her countenance was wholly inscrutable to him. There was a moment's silence before he continued.

"How far the explanation is necessary," he said, "I do not know. I am aware that you received a sealed letter, through Cortlin, from a man named Fitzwilliam Clarke, who is now dead. What that letter contained is your own affair. I also received a letter from the same source and by the same hand. It is of the revelation contained in that letter that I am come to speak to you."

Bettina hardly knew whether she was waking or sleeping. The astounding suddenness of the consciousness which had come to her now seemed to stun both her body and her mind. She made no sign, however, as she sat absolutely still, and her companion went on.

"The letter to you was delivered, you remember, before my return to England. The interval which elapsed before the delivery of the letter to me--which occurred scarcely more than a week ago--was due to the fact that Cortlin had been instructed to put each of these letters into the hands of none but the man and woman to whom they were addressed. In the second instance he was prevented by illness from the prompt performance of his duty. He has had a long and serious attack of fever. As soon as his condition of health permitted he sent for me and put the letter into my hands, telling me that he was ignorant as to its contents, but that a letter from the same source had been delivered to you by him immediately after the death of the scoundrel whose treachery had betrayed you into a marriage with him."

Bettina could not speak or look at him. The thoughts which were seething through her brain were too confused for speech. One thing, however, was quite clear to her. The resentment that this man so fiercely manifested was for her sake, not his own. His anger was an impersonal thing. He had a manly and chivalrous nature, and the mere fact that her mother had once committed her into his keeping would const.i.tute a strong claim on such a nature. He was outraged that a countryman and kinsman of his own could so villanously have duped her. As for his own wrongs in the matter, he apparently did not consider these. For all consciousness of them in his words and tones they might never have existed.

While these thoughts were pa.s.sing through her mind, he had risen, and was pacing the floor with restless strides. Now he paused in front of her and said:

"I trust it may not seem to you that I did wrong to come to you and tell you of the revelation that had been made to me. I have done it in the belief that the letter which you received conveyed the same information. May I be allowed to know if this is true?"

Bettina bent her head, but said no more.

"Then I feel myself justified in having come," he said, in a tone of relief. "If I could have known you ignorant of the infamous wrong that was done you, by the unscrupulous means used to beguile you into a marriage which must so have tortured and humiliated any woman, I might have kept silent. It might perhaps have been best to omit from the list of the wrongs you must have suffered this crowning infamy of all. But since it seemed certain that you knew it, and since it had doubtless been the reason of your refusing to touch the money which was so rightfully your due, and of your leaving the country where this great wrong had been done you, I could not rest until I had spoken. I could not still the longing to give you a certain solace which I hoped it might be in my power to give. I knew how sad and lonely you were. I had written to the rector and asked for tidings of you."

"You had? He never told me," she said, wonderingly.

"I particularly bound him not to do so; but I did write more than once, and got his answers. In that way it came to me that you were unhappy--courageously and unselfishly, yet profoundly so, and it was not difficult for me to comprehend the reason. You will forgive me for going into a dead and buried issue for this once; but I knew your nature, and it was obvious to me that you were torturing yourself because you felt that you had done a wrong to me."

Bettina caught her breath suddenly, and covered her face with her hands.

"Is it not so?" he said.

But she could not speak. The shrinking anguish of her whole att.i.tude was her only answer.

Then he took the seat nearest her, and said:

"It is with the hope of lifting this totally unnecessary burden from your mind that I have come. I beg you to have patience with me while I speak to you quite simply and tell you why you would be doing wrong to blame yourself on my account. For this once I must ask you to let me speak of the past--not the recent past--let us consider that in its grave forever--but the remote past, in which for a short while I had a share. I, too, have my confession to make and pardon to beg, for I am conscious that I wronged you, though it was through ignorance, youth, inexperience, and also--forgive me for mentioning it, but it is my best justification--also because I loved you, with a love which I was then too ignorant even to comprehend. I needs must beg you to remember that, in owning my great wrong to you. This wrong," he continued, after an instant's pause, "consisted in my urging you to marry me when you did not love me. I feared it was so, even then; but I was selfish; I thought of myself and not of you.