Elster's Folly

CHAPTER XV.

VAL'S DILEMMA.

It was a mild day in spring. The air was balmy, but the skies were grey and lowering; and as a gentleman strolled across a field adjoining Hartledon Park he looked up at them more than once, as if asking whether they threatened rain.

Not that he had any great personal interest in the question. Whether the skies gave forth suns.h.i.+ne or rain is of little moment to a mind not at rest. He had only looked up in listlessness. A stranger might have taken him at a distance for a gamekeeper: his coat was of velveteen; his boots were muddy: but a nearer inspection would have removed the impression.

It was Lord Hartledon; but changed since you last saw him. For some time past there had been a worn, weary look upon his face, bespeaking a mind ill at ease; the truth is, his conscience was not at rest, and in time that tells on the countenance.

He had been by the fish-pond for an hour. But the fish had not shown themselves inclined to bite, and he grew too impatient to remain.

Not altogether impatient at the wary fish, but in his own mental restlessness. The fis.h.i.+ng-rod was carried in his hand in pieces; and he splashed along, in a brown study, on the wet ground, flinging himself over the ha-ha with an ungracious movement. Some one was approaching across the park from the house, and Lord Hartledon walked on to a gate, and waited there for him to come up. He began beating the bars with the thin end of the rod, and--broke it!

"That's the way you use your fis.h.i.+ng-rods," cried the free, pleasant voice of the new-comer. "I shouldn't mind being appointed purveyor of tackle to your lords.h.i.+p."

The stranger was an active little man, older than Hartledon; his features were thin, his eyes dark and luminous. I think you have heard his name--Thomas Carr. Lord Hartledon once called him the greatest friend he possessed on earth. He had been wont to fly to him in his past dilemmas, and the habit was strong upon him still. A mandate that would have been peremptory, but for the beseeching terms in which it was couched, had reached Mr. Carr on circuit; and he had hastened across country to obey it, reaching Hartledon the previous evening. That something was wrong, Mr. Carr of course was aware; but what, he did not yet know. Lord Hartledon, with his natural vacillation, his usual shrinking from the discussion of unpleasant topics relating to himself, had not entered upon it at all on the previous night; and when breakfast was over that morning, Mr. Carr had craved an hour alone for letter-writing. It was the first time Mr. Carr had visited his friend at his new inheritance; indeed the first time he had been at all at Hartledon. Lord Hartledon seated himself on the gate; the barrister leaned his arms on the top bar whilst he talked to him.

"What is the matter?" asked the latter.

"Not much."

"I have finished my letters, so I came out to look for you. You are not changed, Elster."

"What should change me in so short a time?--it's only six months since you last saw me," retorted Hartledon, curtly.

"I alluded to your nature. I had to worm the troubles out of you in the old days, each one as it arose. I see I shall have

Don't say there's not much the matter, for I am sure there is."

Lord Hartledon jerked his handkerchief out of his pocket, pa.s.sed it over his face, and put it back again.

"What fresh folly have you got into?--as I used to ask you at Oxford. You are in some mess."

"I suppose it's of no use denying that I am in one. An awful mess, too."

"Well, I have pulled you out of many a one in my time. Let me hear it."

"There are some things one does not like to talk about, Carr. I sent for you in my perplexity; but I believe you can be of no use to me."

"So you have said before now. But it generally turned out that I was of use to you, and cleared you from your nightmare."

"All those were minor difficulties; this is different."

"I cannot understand your 'not liking' to speak of things to me. Why don't you begin?"

"Because I shall prove myself worse than a fool. You'll despise me to your heart's core. Carr, I think I shall go mad!"

"Tell me the cause first, and go mad afterwards. Come, Val; I am your true friend."

"I have made an offer of marriage to two women," said Hartledon, desperately plunging into the revelation. "Never was such a born idiot in the world as I have been. I can't marry both."

"I imagine not," quietly replied Mr. Carr.

"You knew I was engaged to Miss Ashton?"

"Yes."

"And I'm sure I loved her with all my"--he seemed to hesitate for a strong term--"might and main; and do still. But I have managed to get into mischief elsewhere."

"Elster's folly, as usual. What sort of mischief?"

"The worst sort, for there can be no slipping out of it. When that fever broke out at Doctor Ashton's--you heard us talking of it last night, Carr--I went to the Rectory just as usual. What did I care for fever?--it was not likely to attack me. But the countess-dowager found it out--"

"Why do they stay here so long?" interrupted Thomas Carr. "They have been here ever since your brother died."

"And before it. The old woman likes her quarters, and has no settled home. She makes a merit of stopping, and says I ought to feel under eternal obligation to her and Maude for sacrificing themselves to a solitary man and his household. But you should have heard the uproar she made upon discovering I had been to the Rectory. She had my room fumigated and my clothes burnt."

"Foolish old creature!"

"The best of it was, I pointed out by mistake the wrong coat, and the offending one is upstairs now. I shall show it her some day. She reproached me with holding her life and her daughter's dirt-cheap, and wormed a promise out of me not to visit the Rectory as long as fever was in it."

"Which you gave?"

"She wormed it out of me, I tell you. I don't know that I should have kept it, but Dr. Ashton put in his veto also; and between the two I was kept away. For many weeks afterwards I never saw or spoke to Anne. She did not come out at all, even to church; they were so anxious the fever should not spread."

"Well? Go on, Val."

"Well: how does that proverb run, about idleness being the root of all evil? During those weeks I was an idle man, wretchedly bored; and I fell into a flirtation with Maude. She began it, Carr, on my solemn word of honour--though it's a shame to tell these tales of a woman; and I joined in from sheer weariness, to kill time. But you know how one gets led on in such things--or I do, if you, you cautious fellow, don't--and we both went in pretty deep."

"Elster's folly again! How deep?"

"As deep as I well could, short of committing myself to a proposal. You see the ill-luck of it was, those two and I being alone in the house. I may as well say Maude and I alone; for the old woman kept her room very much; she had a cold, she said, and was afraid of the fever."

"Tus.h.!.+" cried Thomas Carr angrily. "And you made love to the young lady?"

"As fast as I could make it. What a fool I was! But I protest I only did it in amus.e.m.e.nt; I never thought of her supplanting Anne Ashton. Now, Carr, you are looking as you used to look at Oxford; get your brow smooth again. You just shut up yourself for weeks with a fascinating girl, and see if you wouldn't find yourself in some horrible entanglement, proof against such as you think you are."

"As I am obliged to be. I should take care not to lay myself open to the temptation. Neither need you have done it."

"I don't see how I was to help myself. Often and often I wished to have visitors in the house, but the old woman met me with reproaches that I was forgetting the recent death of my brother. She won't have any one now if she knows it, and I had to send for you quietly. Did you see how she stared last night when you came in?"

Mr. Carr drew down his lips. "You might have gone away yourself, Elster."

"Of course I might," was the testy reply. "But I was a fool, and didn't.

Carr, I swear to you I fell into the trap unconsciously; I did not foresee danger. Maude is a charming girl, there's no denying it; but as to love, I never glanced at it."

"Was it not suspected in town last year that Lady Maude had a liking for your brother?"

"It was suspected there and here; I thought it myself. We were mistaken.