Kitabı oku: «The Silent Shore», sayfa 4

"It would almost have been better to have remained on friendly terms with him, I think," he said. "Perhaps he thought he was only doing his duty in disclosing himself."

"Perhaps so!" the other said. "But, as for being friendly with him, damn him! I wish he were dead!"

CHAPTER VI

Sir Paul Raughton's Ascot party had been excellently arranged, every guest being specially chosen with a view to making an harmonious whole. Belmont was a charming villa, lying almost on the borders of the two lovely counties of Berkshire and Surrey, and neither the beauties of Nature nor Art were wanting. Surrounded by woods in which other villas nestled, it was shut off from the world, whilst its own spacious lawns and gardens enclosed it entirely from the notice of passers-by. It was by no means used only during Ascot week, as both Ida and her father were in the habit of frequently paying visits to it in the spring, summer, and autumn; and only in the winter, when the trees were bare, and the wind swept over the heath and downs, was it deserted.

On this Ascot week, or to be particular, this Monday of Ascot week, when the guests were beginning to arrive for the campaign, it was as bright and pretty a spot as any in England. The lawn was dotted with two or three little umbrella tents, under which those arrivals, who were not basking under the shadow of trees, were seated; some of them talking of what they had done since last they met; some engaged in speculating over the chances of the various horses entered for the "Cup," the "Stakes," and the "Vase;" some engaged in idly sipping their afternoon tea (or their afternoon sherry and bitters, as the sex might be), and some engaged in the most luxurious of all pursuits-doing nothing. Yet, although Sir Paul's selection of guests had been admirable, disappointment had come to him and Ida, for two who would have been the most welcome, Mr. Cundall and Lord Penlyn, had written to say they could not come. The former's letter had been very short, and the explanation given for his refusal was that he was again preparing to leave England, perhaps for a very long period. And Lord Penlyn's had been to the effect that some business affairs connected with his property would prevent him from leaving town during the week. Moreover, it was dated from a fashionable hotel in the West End, and not from Occleve House.

"What the deuce can the boy be doing?" the Baronet asked himself, as he read the letter over once or twice before showing it to his daughter. They were seated at breakfast when it came, and none of the guests having arrived, they were entirely by themselves. "What the deuce can he be doing?" he repeated. "Ascot week of most weeks in the year, is the one in which a man likes to get out of town, yet instead of coming here he goes and stews himself up in a beastly hotel! And Cundall, too! Why can't the man stop at home like a Christian, instead of going and grilling in the Tropics? He can't want to make any more money, surely!" After which reflections he handed both the letters over to Ida. When she read them she was sorely troubled, for she could not help imagining that there was something more than strange in the fact that the man who was engaged to her, and the man who had proposed to her only a few nights ago, should both have abstained from coming to spend the week with them. At first, she wondered if they could have met and quarrelled-but then she reflected that that was not possible! Surely Mr. Cundall would not have told Gervase that he had proposed to her and been refused. Men, she thought, did not talk about their love affairs to one another; certainly the rejected one would not confide in the accepted. Still, she was very troubled! Troubled because the man she loved, and whom she had not seen for three days-and it seemed an eternity! – would not be there to pass that happy week with her; and troubled also because the man whom she did not love, but whom she liked and pitied so, was evidently sore at heart. "He was going away again, perhaps for a very long period," he had said, yet, on the night of Lady Chesterton's ball, he had told her that he would go no more away. It must be, she knew, that her rejection of him was once more driving him to be a wanderer on the earth, and, womanlike, she could not but feel sorry for him. She knew as well as Rosalind that men, though they died, did not die for love; but still they must suffer for their unrequited love. That he would suffer, the look in his face and the tone of his voice on that night showed very plainly; his letter to her father and his forthcoming departure told her that the suffering had begun.

Fortunately for her the arrivals of the guests, and her duties as hostess, prevented her from having much time for reflection. The visitors had come to be amused, and she could not be distraite or forgetful of their comfort. The gentlemen might look after themselves and amuse each other, as they could do very well with their sporting newspapers and Ruff's Guides, their betting-books and their cigars; but the ladies could not be neglected. So, all through that long summer day, Ida, whose mind was filled with the picture of two men, had to put her own thoughts out of sight, and devote herself to the thoughts of others. She had to listen to the rhapsodies of a young lady over her presentation at Court, to how our gracious Queen had smiled kindly on her, and to how the world seemed full of happiness and joy; she had to listen to the bemoanings of an elderly lady as to the manner in which her servants behaved, and to sympathise with another upon the way in which her son was ruining himself with baccarat and racing. And she had to enter into full particulars as to all things concerning her forthcoming marriage, to give exact accounts of the way in which M. Delaruche was preparing her trousseau, and of what alterations were to be made in Occleve House in London, and at Occleve Chase in the country, for her reception; to hear the married ladies congratulate her on the match she was making, and the younger ones gush over the manly perfections of her future husband. But she had also to tell them all that he would not be there this week, and to listen to the chorus of astonishment that this statement produced..

"Not here, my dear Ida," the elderly lady, whose servants caused her so much trouble, said. "Not here. Why, what a strange future husband! To leave you alone for a whole week, and such a week, too, as the Ascot one." And the elderly lady-whose husband at that moment was offering to take four to one in hundreds from Sir Paul that Flip Flap won his race-shook her head disapprovingly.

"Nothing will induce my son to stay away from Ascot," the mother of the gambling young man said to herself. "He will be here to-night, though he is not engaged to Ida." And the poor lady sighed deeply.

"I did so want to see him," the young lady who had just been presented, remarked. "You know I have never met Lord Penlyn yet, and I am dying to know him. They say he is so good-looking."

Ida answered them all as well as she could, but she found it hard to do so. And before she had had more than time to make a few confused remarks on his being obliged to stop away, on account of business connected with his property, another unpleasantness occurred.

"I have just heard very bad news, Miss Raughton," a tall gentleman remarked, who had joined the group of ladies. "Sir Paul tells me that Cundall isn't coming for the week. I'm particularly upset, for I wanted him to give me some introductions in Vienna, to which I am just off, you know."

Again the chorus rose, and again poor Ida had to explain that Mr. Cundall was preparing to go abroad once more for a long period. And, as she made the explanation, she could not keep down a tell-tale blush. Seated in that group was more than one who had once thought that, if she loved any man, that man was Walter Cundall.

"He doesn't care for horse-racing, I imagine," the ill-used mother said.

"No more should I," the tall gentleman remarked, "if I had his money. What fun could a race be to him, when a turf gamble would be like a drop in the ocean to a man of his tremendous means?"

"And I have never seen him either," the débutante remarked, with a look that was comically piteous. "Oh, dear! this is something dreadful! Just think of both Lord Penlyn and Mr. Cundall being absent."

"Don't you think some of us others can supply their places?" the gentleman asked. "We will try very hard, you know!"

"Oh, yes! of course," she replied; "but then we know you, and we don't-at least, I don't-know them. And then you care about racing, and will be thinking of nothing but the horrid horses."

"I will promise to think about nothing but you," he said, lowering his voice, "if you will let me."

At dinner, things were more comfortable for Ida. All the visitors knew now that Penlyn and Cundall were certain absentees, and, having once discussed this, they found plenty of other things to talk about. Sir Paul had got all his guests well assorted, even to the melancholy mother, who took comfort from the words of wisdom that dropped from the mouth of the gentleman who wanted to back Flip Flap: "Let the boy have his fling, madam, let him have his fling! There is nothing sickens a man so much of gambling as an unlimited opportunity of indulging in it. Give him this, and then, if he loses, pull him up sharp on his allowance, and he'll be all right. When he finds he has no more money to squander, he will either play so carefully that he will begin to win, or he'll throw it up altogether. That is what they generally do." It seemed, however, from his conversation, that he had never done that himself.

Miss Norris, the young lady in her first season, was gradually getting over, or, indeed, had got over, her disappointment, and now seemed very comfortable with Mr. Fulke, the tall gentleman. He was a man of the world as well as of society, and knew everybody, and she began to think that, after all, she could support the absence of Lord Penlyn and Mr. Cundall.

So the first night passed away very pleasantly, and Sir Paul congratulated himself on the prospect of a pleasant week. Of course, as was natural, a gentleman would occasionally interrupt a conversation with his neighbour; a conversation on balls and dinners, and the opera, and the last theatrical production; by leaning across the table and saying to another gentleman, "I'll take you five to four in tenners, or ponies, about that;" or, "you can have three hundred to one hundred it doesn't win, if you like;" and, of course, also, there would be the production of little silver-bound books afterwards, and some hasty writing. But on the whole, though, the introduction of the state of Lady Matilda's legs into the conversation, until it turned out that she was a mare who was first favourite for the Cup, did rather dismay some of the fairer portion of the guests, everything was very nice and comfortable.

It was a hot night, an overpoweringly hot night, and every one was glad to escape from the dining-room on to the lawn, where the footmen had brought out lamp-lit tables for the coffee. It seemed to the guests that there must be a thunderstorm brewing; indeed, towards London, where there were heavy banks of lurid clouds massed together, flashes of lightning were occasionally seen, and the thunder heard rolling. But the gentlemen even derived consolation from this, and said that a good storm would make the course-which was as hard as a brick floor-better going, and would lay the dust on the country roads.

At eleven o'clock the last guest, Mr. Montagu, the sportive son of the sad lady, arrived, and, as he brought the latest racing information from town, was eagerly welcomed.

"Yes," he said, after he had kissed his mother and had told her she needn't bother herself about him, he was all right enough. "Yes! the favourites are steady. I dropped into the 'Victoria' before coming over to Waterloo, and took a look at the betting. There you are! And here's the 'Special.'"

These were eagerly seized on and perused. Lady Matilda's legs, which had been the cause of anxiety in the racing world for the past week, seemed to be well enough to give her followers confidence; Mon Roi, another great horse, was advancing in the betting; Flip Flap was all right, and Sir Paul felt thankful he had not laid that bet of four hundred to one hundred in the afternoon; and The Landlord was being driven back. It took another hour for the gentlemen to get all their opinions expressed, and then they went to their rooms, the ladies having long since retired.

"Don't oversleep yourselves, any of you!" Sir Paul Raughton called out cheerily. "We ought to get the four-in-hands under weigh by half-past eleven at latest. Breakfast will be ready as soon as the earliest of you."

Ida went to her room tired with the day's exertions; but her night's rest was very broken. In the early part, the flashing of the lightning and the roar of the thunder (the storm having now broken over the neighbourhood) kept her awake, and when she slept she did so uneasily, waking often. Once she started up and listened tremblingly, as though hearing some unaccustomed sound, and even rose and opened her door, and looked into the passage. "Of what was she afraid?" she asked herself. The house was full of visitors; it was, of all times, the least one likely for harm to come. Then she went back to bed and eventually slept again, though only to dream. Her brain must have retained what she had read in Walter Cundall's letter that morning, for she dreamt that he was taking his farewell of her; only it seemed that they were back again in the conservatory attached to Lady Chesterton's ball-room. She was seated in the same place as she had been when he told her of his love; she could hear the dreamy strains of the very same waltz-nothing was changed, except that it seemed darker, much darker; and she could do little more than recognise his form and see his dark, sad eyes fixed on her. Then he bent over her and kissed her gently on the forehead-more, as it seemed in her dream, with a brother's than a lover's kiss-and said: "Farewell, for ever! In this world we two shall never meet again." Then, as he turned to go, she saw behind him another form with its face shrouded, but with a figure that seemed wonderfully familiar to her, and, as he faced it, it sprang upon him. And with a shriek she awoke-awoke to see the bright sun shining in through her windows, to hear the birds singing outside, and to notice that the hands of the clock pointed to nearly eight.

And her first action was to kneel by the side of her bed and to thank God that it was only a dream.

CHAPTER VII

There were no late risers at Belmont on that morning, for even the elder ladies, who were not going to Ascot but meant to remain at home and pass the day pleasantly in their own society, made it a point of being early. The younger ones, with Miss Norris the very first down, were a sight that was charming to the gentlemen, with their pretty new gowns prepared especially for the occasion; but of them all, none looked fairer than Ida. Her disturbed rest had made her, perhaps, a little paler than usual, but had thus only added a more delicate tinge to her loveliness. As she stood talking to young Montagu on the verandah, this youth began to wish that he was Lord Penlyn, and to think that there were other things in the world better than going Banco or backing winners-or losers! Indefatigable in everything connected with sport, the young man, in company with two other visitors, officers who had been in India and had become accustomed to early rising, had already ridden over to Ascot to learn what was going on there, and to see if any information could be picked up.

"And now, Miss Raughton," he said, "to breakfast with what appetite we can? And I can assure you that, if old Wolsey had only half as good a one as mine is now, King Hal wouldn't have frightened him into saying, 'good-bye' to all the good things in life."

Ida laughed at his nonsense, and then, every one being down, the first important part of the day's proceedings began.

The story of an Ascot party has been told so often and so well, that no other pen is needed to describe it. There are few of us who, either in long vanished or in very recent days, have not formed part in one of these pleasant outings; who have not sat upon a coach, with some young lady beside us, who seemed, at least for the time being, to be the prettiest and nicest girl in the world; who have not eaten our fill of lobster salad and pigeon pie, and drunk our fill of champagne and claret cup!

Sir Paul's party went through it all; the gentlemen (with Mr. Montagu very busy at this) dashing across the course between each race, and into the Grand Stand to "see about the odds." Flip Flap disgraced himself terribly in the Gold Vase, and came in last of all, much to Sir Paul's disgust, who regretted now that he had not laid his old friend four to one in hundreds, but to the intense delight of young Montagu, who had persuaded Fulke to take the same odds in tens from him.

"Hoorah!" he cried, as the beaten favourite came in with the crowd, "now, if 'Tilda will only pull off the Stakes, I am bound to score heavily to-day."

And he dashed off across the course again, to see what the betting was about the magnificent mare whose name he so familiarly shortened.

Ida sat very peacefully on the coach listening to all the laughter and conversation that was going on around her, but taking very little part in it, except when directly spoken to. But in the intervals, when it was not necessary for her to join in it, her mind reverted to things and persons far away from the bright, sunny racecourse. In her heart, she did feel hurt that, whatever important business transactions he might have, her lover could not find time to run down for even one day. It was evidently supposed by some one that he was with her, for only that morning a letter had come to Belmont for him, a letter which she had instantly reposted to the hotel he was staying at accompanied by a loving one from herself which she had found time to write hastily. It had seemed to her that she knew the handwriting, and she supposed it must be from some common friend of theirs; but, whoever the writer was, he evidently thought Gervase was with them. She supposed he really was very much occupied, but still she wished he would come for one day; and she made up her mind to write to him again that night, and ask him to run down for the Cup. He could leave town at midday and be back at seven; surely he could spare that much time to her! Nor had she forgotten her dream, her horrid dream, and she wondered over and over again why she should have had such a dreadful one, and why last night? Perhaps it was the storm that had affected her!

Once more young Montagu's star was in the ascendant, for Lady Matilda beat all her adversaries, and, to use a sporting phrase, "romped in" for the Stakes. There was great rejoicing over this on the Belmont coaches, of which there were two, one driven by Sir Paul and one by Mr. Fulke; for most of them had backed her with the bookmakers, and so, while they all won, there was no loser in the party. Miss Norris, too, had won a dozen of gloves from Fulke, who took the field against the horse he fancied to oblige the girl he admired, and Sir Paul had promised Ida anything she liked to ask for if Lady Matilda only got home first.

Of course, after the last race, there was an adjournment of the whole party to the lawn; who goes to Ascot without also going to sit for a while in one of the prettiest scenes attached to a racecourse in England? There, seated on comfortable chairs on that soft velvet lawn, with the hot June sun sinking conveniently behind the Grand Stand, the party remained peacefully and chatted until the horses should be put to.

It was at this time that, to the different groups scattered about, there came a rumour that a horrible murder had been committed in London last night, or early that morning. A few persons, who had come down by the last special train, had heard something about it, but they did not know anything of the details; and two or three copies of the first editions of the evening papers had arrived, but they told very little, except that undoubtedly a murder had taken place, and that the victim was, to all appearances, a gentleman. Had it been a common murder in the Seven Dials, or the East End, it would hardly have aroused attention at aristocratic Ascot.

Young Montagu first heard it from a bookmaker with whom he was having a satisfactory settlement, but that worthy knew nothing except that "some one said it was a swell, and that he had been stabbed to the 'eart in the Park."

"Get a paper, Montagu," the baronet said, "and let us, see what it is. Every one seems to be discussing it."

"Easier said than done, Sir Paul!" the other answered. "But I'll try."

He came back in a few moments, having succeeded in borrowing a second edition from a friend, and he read out to them the particulars, which were by no means full. It appeared that, after the storm in London was over, which was about three o'clock in the morning, a policeman going on his walk down the Mall of St. James' Park, had come across a gentleman lying by the railings that divide that part of it from the gardens, a gentleman whom he at first took to be overcome by drink. On shaking him, however, he discovered him to be dead, and he then thought that he must have been struck by lightning. A further glance showed that this was not the case, as he perceived that the dead man was stabbed in the region of the heart, that his watch and chain had been wrenched away (there being a broken piece of the chain left in the button-hole), and, if he had any, his papers and pocket-book taken. His umbrella, which was without any name or engraving, was by his side his linen, which was extremely fine, was unmarked, and his clothes, although drenched with mud and rain, were of the best possible quality. That, up to now, was all the information the paper possessed.

"How dreadful to think of a man being murdered in such a public place as that!" Ida said. "Surely the murderer cannot long escape!"

"I don't know about that," Mr. Fulke said. "The Mall at three o'clock in the morning, especially on such a morning-what a storm it was! – is not very much frequented. A man walking down it might easily be attacked and robbed!"

"It is a nice state of affairs, when a gentleman cannot walk about London without being murdered," Sir Paul said. "But horrible things seem to happen every day now."

The public were leaving the lawn by this time, and one of the grooms came over to say that the coaches were ready. There was no longer anything to stay for, and so they all went back and took their places, and started for Belmont.

It was a glorious evening after a glorious day; and as they went along, some laughing and talking, some flirting, and some discussing the day's racing and speculating on that of the morrow, they had forgotten all about the tragedy they had heard of half-an-hour earlier. Not one of them supposed that the murdered man was likely to be known to them, nor that that crime had broken up their Ascot week. But when they had returned to Belmont, and gone to their rooms to dress for dinner, they learnt that the dead man was known to most of them. A telegram had come to Sir Paul from his butler in London, saying: "The gentleman murdered in St. James' Park last night was Mr. Cundall. He has been identified by his butler and servants."