Read Ebook: Stand Fast Craig-Royston! (Volume III) by Black William

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Ebook has 712 lines and 60688 words, and 15 pages

"I thank you," said Vincent, with formal politeness; and with an equally formal 'Good night' the young man took his leave. Mr. Courtnay Fox instantly hid the broken portions of the cane , and, ringing the bell, called in a loud and manly voice for the latest telegrams.

So Vincent was once more thrown back on himself and his own resources. During these past few days he had sought everywhere for the two lost ones; and sought in vain. First of all he had made sure they had left Brighton; then he had come to London; and morning, noon, and night had visited their accustomed haunts, without finding the least trace of them. He went from this restaurant to that; in the morning he walked about the Parks; he called at the libraries where they were known; no sign of them could be found anywhere. And now, when he thought of Maisrie, his heart was no longer angry and reproachful: nay, he grew to think it was in some wild mood of self-sacrifice that she had resolved to go away, and had persuaded her grandfather to take her. She had got some notion into her head that she was a degraded person; that his friends suspected her; that no future as between him and her was possible; that it was better they should see each other no more. He remembered how she had drawn up her head in maidenly pride--in indignation, almost: his relatives might be at peace: they had nothing to fear from her. And here was the little brooch--with its tiny white dove, that was to rest on her bosom, as if bringing a message of love and safety--all ready for her; but her place was empty; she had gone from him, and perhaps for ever. The very waiters in the restaurants, when he went there all alone, ventured to express a little discreet surprise, and make enquiries: he could say nothing. He had the sandal-wood necklace, to be sure; and sometimes he wore it over his heart; and on the way home, through the dark thoroughfares, at times a faint touch of the perfume reached his nostrils--but there was no Maisrie by his side. And then again, a sudden, marvellous vision would come before him: of Maisrie, her hair blown by the winds, her eyes piteous and full of tears, her eyebrows and lashes wet with the flying spray; and she would say 'Kiss me, Vincent, kiss me!' as if she had already resolved to go, and knew that this was to be a last, despairing farewell.

The days passed; and ever he continued his diligent search, for he knew that these two had but little money, and guessed that they had not departed on any far travel, especially at this time of the year. He went down to Scotland, and made enquiries among the Edinburgh newspaper offices--without avail. He advertised in several of the London daily journals: there was no reply. He told the head-waiter at the Restaurant Mentavisti, that if Mr. Bethune and his granddaughter--who were well-known to all in the place--should make their appearance any evening, and if he, the headwaiter, could manage to send some one to follow them home and ascertain their address, that would mean a couple of sovereigns in his pocket; but the opportunity never presented itself. And meanwhile this young man, taking no care of himself, and fretting from morning till evening, and often all the sleepless night through as well, was gradually losing his colour, and becoming like the ghost of his own natural self.

Christmas came. Harland Harris and Vincent went down to pass the holidays with Mrs. Ellison, at Brighton; and for the same purpose Lord Musselburgh returned to the Bedford Hotel. The four of them dined together on Christmas evening. It was not a very boisterous party, considering that the pragmatical and pedantic voice of the man of wealth was heard discoursing on such light and fanciful themes as the payment of returning officers' expenses, the equalisation of the death duties, and the establishment of state-assisted intermediate schools; but Musselburgh threw in a little jest now and again, to mitigate the ponderosity of the harangue. Vincent was almost silent. Since coming down from London, he had not said a single word to any one of them about Mr. Bethune or his granddaughter: no doubt they would have told him--and perhaps rejoiced to tell him--that he had been betrayed. But Mrs. Ellison, sitting there, and watching more than listening, was concerned about the looks of her boy, as she called him; and before she left the table, she took up her glass, and said--

"I am going to ask you two gentlemen to drink a toast--and it is the health of the coming member for Mendover. And I'm going to ask him to pull himself together, and show some good spirits; for there's nothing a constituency likes so much as a merry and good-humoured candidate."

It was clear moonlight that night: Vin's room faced the sea. Hour after hour he sate at the window, looking on the wide, grey plain and the faint blue-grey skies; and getting no good of either; for the far-searching doves of his thoughts came back to him without a twig of hope in their bill. The whole world seemed empty--and silent. He began to recall the time in which he used to think--or to fear--that some day a vast and solitary sea would come between Maisrie and himself; it was something he had dreamed or imagined; but this was altogether different now--this blank ignorance of where she might be was a far more terrible thing. He went over the different places he had heard her mention--Omaha, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec: they only seemed to make the world the wider--to remove her further away from him, and interpose a veil between. She had vanished like a vision; and yet it was but the other day that he had found her clinging tight to his arm, her beautiful brown hair blown wet about her face, her eyes with love shining through her tears, her lips--when he kissed them--salt with the flying spray. And no longer--after that first and sudden outburst of indignant wrath--did he accuse her of any faithlessness or treachery: rather it was himself whom he reproached. Had he not promised, at the very moment when she had made her maiden confession to him, and spoken to him as a girl speaks once only in her life, had he not promised that always and always he would say to himself 'Wherever Maisrie is--wherever she may be--she loves me, and is thinking of me?' This was the Mizpah set up between those two; and he had vowed his vow. What her going away might mean he could not tell; but at all events it was not permitted him to doubt--he dared not doubt--her love.

As for these repeated allegations that old George Bethune was nothing less than a mendicant impostor, what did that matter to him? Even if these charges could be substantiated, how was that to affect Maisrie or himself? No association could sully that pure soul. Perhaps it was the case that Mr. Bethune was not over-scrupulous and careful about money matters; many otherwise excellent persons had been of like habit. The band of private inquiry agents had amongst them discovered that the old man had allowed Vincent to pay the bill at the various restaurants they frequented. Well, that was true. Among the vague insinuations and assumptions that had been pieced together to form an indictment, here was one bit of solid fact. And what of it? Of what importance were those few trumpery shillings? It was of little moment which paid: here was an arrangement, become a habit, that had a certain convenience. And Vincent was proud to set against that, or against any conclusions that might be drawn from that, the incident of old George Bethune's stopping the poor woman in Hyde Park, and handing over to her all he possessed--sovereigns, shillings, and pence--so that he did not even leave himself the wherewithal to buy a biscuit for his mid-day meal. Perhaps there were more sides to George Bethune's character than were likely to occur to the imagination of Messrs. Harland Harris, Morris, and Company?

The next morning Lord Musselburgh was out walking in the King's Road with the fair young widow who hoped soon to be re-transformed into a wife.

"I really cannot say," her companion answered blandly. "I belong to a sphere in which such violent convulsions are unknown."

"At all events, Parliament will meet about the middle of February?" she demanded.

"I presume so," was the careless answer.

"Why, really, Madge, there's a sort of furious activity about you this morning," said he. "You quite take one's breath away. I shouldn't be surprised to see you on a platform yourself."

"It's all for Vin's sake I am so anxious," she exclaimed. "I can see how miserable and sad the poor boy is--though he bears it so bravely--never a word to one of us, lest we should ask him if he believes in those people now. I wonder if he can. I wonder if he was so blinded that even now he will shut his eyes to their true character?"

"They are quite gone away, then?" her companion asked.

"Oh, yes," she made answer. "I hope so. Indeed, I know they are. And on the whole it was opportune, just as this election was coming on; for now, if ever, Vin will have a chance of throwing off an infatuation that seemed likely to be his ruin, and of beginning that career of which we all hope such great things."

She glanced round, cautiously; and lowered her voice.

"Not all property, my dear Madge," said Lord Musselburgh, politely. "He would say that all property should be under social control--except his property."

"At all events, it seems to me that he occasionally finds it pretty convenient to have plenty of money at his own individual command. Why, for him to denounce the accumulation of capital," she continued, with a pretty scorn, "when no one makes more ostentatious use of the power of money! Is there a single thing he denies himself--one single thing that is only possible to him through his being a man of great wealth? I shouldn't wonder if, when he dies, he leaves instructions to have the electric light turned on into his coffin, just in case he should wake up and want to press the knob."

"Come, come, Madge," said Musselburgh. "Be generous. A man cannot always practice what he preaches. You must grant him the privilege of sighing for an ideal."

"Harland Harris sighing for an ideal," said Mrs. Ellison, with something of feminine spite, "would make a capital subject for an imaginative picture by Watts--if my dear brother-in-law weren't rather stout, and wore a black frock-coat."

Meanwhile, Vincent returned to London, and renewed his solitary search; it was the only thing he felt fit for; all other employments had no meaning for him, were impossible. But, as day by day passed, he became more and more convinced that they must have left London: he knew their familiar haunts so well, and their habits, that he was certain he must have encountered them somewhere if they were still within the great city. And here was the New Year drawing nigh, when friends far separated recalled themselves to each other's memory, with hopes and good wishes for the coming time. It seemed to him that he would not have felt this loneliness so much, if only he had known that Maisrie was in this or that definite place--in Madrid--in Venice--in Rome--or even in some huge steamship ploughing its way across the wide Atlantic.

But a startling surprise was at hand. About half-past ten on the last night of the old year a note was brought upstairs to him by a servant. His face grew suddenly pale when he saw the handwriting, which he instantly recognised.

"Who brought this?" he said, breathlessly.

"A man, sir."

"Is he waiting?"

"No, sir; he said there was no answer."

"What sort of man?" asked Vincent, with the same rapidity--and not yet daring to open the letter.

"A--a common sort of man, sir."

"Very well--you needn't wait."

The moment that the servant had retired, Vincent tore open the envelope; and the first thing that he noticed, with a sudden sinking of the heart, was that there was no address at the head of the letter. It ran thus--the handwriting being a little tremulous here and there--

'DEAR VINCENT,

When you receive this, we shall be far away; but I have arranged that you shall get it just before the New Year, and it brings my heart-felt wishes for your happiness, as well as the good-bye that I cannot say to you personally now. What I foresaw has come to pass; and it will be better for all of us, I think; though it is not with a very light heart that I write these few lines to you. Sometimes I wish that we had never met each other; and then again I should never have known all your kindness to me and to my grandfather, which will always be something to look back upon; and also the companionship we had for a time, which was so pleasant--you would understand how pleasant to me, if you had known what had gone before, and what is now likely to come after. But do not think I repine: more has been done for me than ever I can repay; and as I am the only one to whom my grandfather can look now for help and sympathy, I should be ungrateful indeed if I grudged it.

And now, dearest friend, this is good-bye; and it is good-bye for ever, as between you and me. I will pray for your happiness always.

MAISRIE.

M.'

Was he likely to forget it, or any single word she had uttered, on that wild, wind-tossed morning? But in the meantime the immediate question was--How and whence had this letter come? For one thing, it had been brought by hand; so there was no post-mark. Who, then, had been the messenger? How had he come to be employed? What might he not know of Maisrie's whereabouts? Was there a chance of finding a clue to Maisrie, after all, and just as the glad New Year was coming in?

It was barely eleven o'clock. He went down into the hall, whipped on overcoat and hat, and the next moment was striding away towards Mayfair; he judged, and judged rightly, that a boon companion and poet was not likely to be early abed on such a night. When he reached the lodging-house in the little thoroughfare off Park-street, he could hear singing going forward in the subterranean kitchen: nay, he could make out the raucous chorus--

He rapped at the door; the landlady's daughter answered the summons; she showed him into a room, and then went below for her father. Presently Mr. Hobson appeared--quite creditably sober, considering the occasion.

"Did you bring a note down to me to-night, Hobson?" was the young man's first question.

"I did, sir."

His heart leapt up joyously: his swift surmise had been correct.

"And has Miss Bethune been here recently?" he asked, with the greatest eagerness.

"No, no, sir," said Hobson, shaking his head. "That was giv me when they was going away, and says she, 'Hobson,' says she, 'I can trust you; and there's never a word to be said about this letter--not to hany one whatever; and the night afore New Year's Day you'll take it down yourself, and leave it for Mr. Harris.' Which I did, sir; though not waitin,' as I thought there wasn't a answer; and ope there's nothing wrong, sir."

Vincent was standing in the middle of the room--not listening.

"You have heard or seen nothing, then, of Mr. Bethune or of Miss Bethune, since they left?" he asked, absently.

"Nothing, sir--honly that I took notice of some advertisements, sir, in the papers--"

"I know about those," said Vincent.

So once more, as on many and many a recent occasion, his swiftly-blossoming hopes had been suddenly blighted; and there was nothing for him but to wander idly and pensively away back to Grosvenor Place. The New Year found him in his own room--with Maisrie's letter before him; while, with rather a careworn look on his face he studied every line and phrase of her last message to him.

But the New Year had something else in store for him besides that. He was returned, unopposed, for the borough of Mendover. And about the first thing that his constituents heard, after the election, was that their new member proposed to pay a visit to the United States and Canada, and that at present no date had been fixed for his coming back.

BEYOND SEAS.

Out here on the deck of this great White Star Liner--with the yellow waters of the Mersey lapping in the sunlight, and a brisk breeze blowing, and the curious excitement of departure thrilling through all the heterogeneous crowd of passengers--here something of hope came to him at last. This was better than haunting lonely restaurants, or walking through solitary streets; he seemed to know that Maisrie was no longer in the land he was leaving; she had fled away across the ocean--gone back to the home, to some one of the various homes, of her childhood and girlhood. And although it appeared a mad thing that a young man should set out to explore so vast a continent in search of his lost love, it was not at all the impossible task it looked. He had made certain calculations. Newspaper offices are excellent centres of intelligence; and Scotch-American newspaper offices would still further limit the sphere of his inquiries. He had dreamed of a wide and sorrowful sea lying between him and her; but instead of that imaginary and impassable sea, why, there was only the familiar Atlantic, that nowadays you can cross in less than a week. And when he had found her, and seized her two hands fast, he would reproach her--oh, yes, he would reproach her--though perhaps there might be more of gladness than of anger in his tones.... 'Ah, false love--traitress--coward heart--that ran away! What Quixotic self-sacrifice was it, then, that impelled you?--what fear of relatives?--what fire of wounded pride? No matter now: you are caught and held. You gave yourself to me; you cannot take yourself away again; nor shall any other. No more sudden disappearances--no more trembling notes of farewell--while I have you by the hand!'

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