Читать книгу Court Netherleigh - Mrs. Henry Wood - Страница 11

Oscar Dalrymple gazed at Reuben, for the man's words had struck ominously on his ear. "Do you fancy—do you fear—things may come to a crisis with him, as they did with his uncle?" he breathed in a low tone.

"Not in the same way, sir; not as to himself," returned the man, in agitation. "Mr. Oscar, how could you think it?"

"Nay, Reuben, I think it! Your words alone led to the thought."

"I meant as to his money, sir. He has fallen into a bad, gambling set, just as Mr. Claude fell. One of them is the very same man: Colonel Haughton. He ruined Mr. Claude, and he is ruining Mr. Robert. He was Captain Haughton then; he is colonel now; but he has sold out of the army long ago. He lives by gambling. I have told Mr. Robert so; but he does not believe me."

"That's where he is gone tonight."

"Where he goes every night, Mr. Oscar. Haughton and those men have lured him into their toils, and he can't escape them. He has not the moral courage; and he has the mania for play upon him. He comes home towards morning, flushed and haggard; sometimes in drink—yes, sir, drinking and gaming mostly go together. He appeared laughing and careless before you, but it was all put on."

"Have you warned him—or tried to stop him?"

"Yes, sir, once or twice; but it does no good. I don't like to say too much: he might not take it from me. Those harpies won't let him rest; they come hunting after him, just as they hunted his uncle a score, or more, years ago. Nobody ever had a better heart than Mr. Robert; but he is pliable, and gets led away."

Oscar frowned. He thought Robert had no business to be "led away," and he felt little tolerance for him. Reuben had told all he knew, and Oscar wished him good-night and departed, full of painful thought touching Robert.

The night passed. In the morning Oscar went to South Audley Street to breakfast. Robert was looking ill and anxious.

"Been making a night of it?" said Oscar, lightly. "You look as though you had."

"Yes, I was late. Pour out the coffee, will you, Oscar?"

His own hands were shaking. Oscar saw it as Robert opened his letters. One of them bore the Netherleigh postmark, and was from Farmer Lee. Oscar hardly knew how to open the ball, or what to say for the best.

"I'm sure something is disturbing you, Robert. You have had no sleep; that's easy to be seen. What pursuit can you have that it should keep you up all night!"

"One is never at a loss to kill time in London."

"I suppose not, if it has to be killed. But I did not know it was necessary to kill that which ought to be spent in sleep. One would think you passed your nights at the gaming-table, Robert."

The words startled him, and a flush rose to his pallid features. Oscar was gazing at him steadily.

"Robert, you look conscious. Have you learnt to gamble?"

"Oh, it's nothing," said Robert, confusedly. "I may play a little now and then."

"Do not shirk the question. Have you taken to play?"

"A little, I tell you. Never mind. It's my own affair."

"You were playing last night?"

"Well—yes, I was. Very little."

"Lose or win?" asked Oscar, carelessly.

"Oh, I lost," answered Robert. "The luck was against me."

"Now, my good fellow, do you know what you had best do? Go home to Moat Grange, and get out of this set; I know what gamesters are; they never let a pigeon off till he is stripped of his last feather. Leave with me for the Grange today, and cheat them; and stop there until the mania for play shall have left you, though it should be years to come."

Ah, how heartily Robert Dalrymple wished in his heart that he could do it!—that he could break through the net in which he was involved, in more ways than one! "I cannot go to Moat Grange," he answered.

"Your reasons."

"Because I must stay where I am. I wish I had never come—never set up these chambers; I do wish that. But, as I did so, here I am fixed."

"I cannot think why you did come—flying from your home as soon as your father was under ground. Had you succeeded to twenty thousand a-year, you could but have made hot haste to launch out in the metropolis."

"I did not come to launch out," returned Robert, angrily. "I came to get rid of myself. It was so wretched down there."

Oscar stared. "What made it so?"

"The remembrance of my father. Every face I met, every stick and stone about the place seemed to reproach me with his death. And justly. But for my carelessness he would not have died."

"Well, that is all past and gone, Robert. You shall come back to the Grange with me. You will be safe there."

"No. It is too late."

"It is not too late. What do you mean? If——"

"I tell you it is too late," burst out Robert, in a sharp tone: and Oscar thought it was full of anguish.

He tried persuasion, he tried anger; and no impression whatever could he make on Robert Dalrymple. He thought Robert was wilfully, wickedly obstinate; the secret truth being that Robert was ruined. Oscar told him he "washed his hands" of him, and departed.

It chanced that same afternoon that Robert was passing through Grosvenor Square and met Mr. Grubb close to his house. Looking at him casually, reader, he has not changed; he has the same noble presence, the same gracious manner; nevertheless, the fifteen or sixteen months that have elapsed since his marriage, have brought a look of care to his refined and thoughtful face, a line of pain to his brow. They shook hands.

"Will you come in, Robert?"

"I don't mind if I do," was the answer—for in good truth Robert Dalrymple was too wretched not to seize on anything that might serve to divert him from his own thoughts. But Mr. Grubb paused in sudden remembrance.

"Mary is here today. Have you any objection to meet her?"

"Objection! I shall like it," answered Robert, with a flush of emotion, for Mary Lynn was still inexpressibly dear to him. "I wish with my whole heart that she was my wife—that we had never parted! It was all my foolish doing."

"I thought at the time you were rather chivalrous: I must say that," observed Mr. Grubb, regarding him attentively. "I suppose, in point of fact, you are both waiting for one another now."

"Why do you say that?" asked the young man, in evident agitation.

"Step in here, Robert," said Mr. Grubb, drawing him through the hall to his own room, the library. "Mary persistently refuses to accept good offers: she has had two during the past year; therefore, I conclude that she and you have some private understanding upon the point. I told her so one day, and all the answer I received consisted of a laugh and a blush."

It could have been nothing to the blush that rose to Robert's face now; brow, ears, neck, all were dyed blood-red. The terrible consciousness of how untrue this was, how untrue it was obliged to be, was smiting him with reproachful sting. Mr. Grubb mistook the signs.

"I think," he said, "that former parting was a mistake. It was perfectly right and just that Mrs. Dalrymple should have been well provided for, but——"

"You think I should have taken Moat Grange myself, and procured another home for my mother," interrupted Robert. "Most people do think so. But, if you knew how I hated the sight of the Grange!—never a single room of it but my poor dead father's face seemed to rise up to confront me."

"It might have been best that you should remain in your own home; we will not discuss it now. What I want to say is this—that if you and Mary have been really living upon hope, I don't see why you need live upon it any longer. A portion of your own revenues you may surely claim, a few hundreds yearly; and Mary shall bring as much grist to the mill on her side."

"You are very kind, very thoughtful," murmured Robert.

"But there must be a proviso to that," continued Mr. Grubb. "Reports have reached me that Robert Dalrymple is going headlong to the bad—pardon me if I speak out the whispers freely—that he is becoming reckless, a gamester, I know not what all. I do not believe this, Robert; I do not wish to believe it. I have seen nothing to confirm it, myself; you are in one set of London men, I am in another. In a young man situated as you are, alone, without home-ties, some latitude of conduct may be pardoned if he be a good man and true, he will soon pull himself straight again. If you can assure me on your honour it is nothing more than this, well and good. If it be more—if the worst of the whispers but indicate the truth, you cannot of course think of Mary. Robert, I say I leave this to your honour."

"I should like to pull myself up beyond any earthly thing," spoke the young man, in a flash of what looked far more like despair than hope. "If I could do it—and if Mary were my wife—I—I should have no fear. Let us talk of this another day. Let me see her!"

Mary was just then alone in what they called the grey drawing-room. A lovely room; as indeed all the rooms were in Mr. Grubb's house, made so by him in his love for his wife. He went in search of his wife, giving Robert the opportunity of seeing Mary alone.

Let no woman go to the altar cherishing dislike or contempt of him who is to be her husband. Marriages of indifference are made in plenty, and in time they may become unions of affection. But the other!—it is the most fatal mistake that can be made. Lady Adela treated her husband with scorn, did so systematically; she did not attempt to conceal her dislike; she threw his love back upon him. On the very day of their marriage, when she, in what appeared to be a fit of petulance, drew down all the blinds of the chariot as they drove away from Lord Acorn's door, and he, taking advantage of the privacy, laid his hand on hers, and bent to whisper a word of love, perhaps to take a kiss from her cheek, she effectually repressed him. "Pray do not attempt these—endearments," she said in a scornful tone, "they are not agreeable." Francis Grubb drew back to his corner of the carriage, and a bitter blight fell upon his spirit.

For some months past now, Lady Adela had been pale and thin, sick and ill. She resented the indisposition strongly, for it prevented her joining in the gaiety she loved, and went about wishing fretfully that her baby was born.

"Oh, Robert! Robert!"

Mary Lynn had started up with a cry, so surprised was she to see him enter. She stood blushing even to tears. And Robert? Conscious how unworthy he was of her, how impossible it was that he should dare to claim her, while the love within him was beating on his heart with lively pain, he sat down with a groan and covered his face with his hands. She thought he was ill. She went to him and knelt down, and looked up at him in appealing fear.

"Robert, what is it—what is amiss?"

And for answer, Robert Dalrymple, utterly overcome by the vivid sense of the remorseful past, of despair for the future, let his face fall upon her shoulder, and burst into a fit of heart-rending sobs so terrible for a man to yield himself to.