Volume 20 — Chapter II. I Introduce My Wife—She Disappears!

“A nice young gentleman you are, Master Clide, to play off such a trick as this on your family!” said Admiral de Winton, shaking my hand so vigorously that I feared he was bent in his indignation on shaking it off. “Come, sir, what excuse have you to offer for yourself?”

“My dear uncle, I sha'n't attempt any excuse, for the best reason in the world, that I have not a decent one. But here is my wife,” I said, catching sight of her coming up the terrace; “let her plead for me. I leave my case in her hands.”

Isabel stepped in through the open window, and, going straight up to the old gentleman, held out her hands, blushing and smiling with the prettiest little pretence of being ashamed of herself and dreadfully frightened.

“No excuse!” growled the admiral, hollowing out his hands to hold the soft, pink cheeks, then saluting them with a kiss that resounded through the room like the double report of a pistol-shot. “No excuse indeed! You barefaced hypocrite! How dare you tell me such a crammer? You unmitigated young rascal, what do you mean by it?”

This series of polite inquiries my uncle fired off, holding Isabel all the time at arm's length, with a hand on each shoulder, and looking straight into her face. She was not the least disconcerted by this singular mode of apostrophe.

“Don't scold him! Don't be angry with him! Please don't! It was all my fault,” she said, and looked up at him as if she particularly wanted to kiss him.

“I'll horsewhip him! I'll tie him to the mainmast and flog him!” roared my uncle.

And then came a second volley of pistol-shots.

“No, you sha'n't! If you do, I'll horsewhip you!” declared Isabel, twining her arms round the old sailor's neck, and stamping her tiny foot at him.

My step-mother made her appearance at this crisis with Sir Simon Harness. She had driven to meet our guests, but, instead of driving back with them, she and Sir Simon walked up together from the station, and sent on the admiral alone in the carriage.

After bidding him a cordial welcome, I presented Isabel to Sir Simon. She held out her hand. He raised it to his lips, bending his venerable white head before my young wife with that courtly grace that gave a touch of old-fashioned stiffness to his manner towards women, but which was in reality the genuine expression of chivalrous respect.

Isabel, not apparently satisfied with the stately homage, drew nearer, and, putting up her face, “May I, Clide?” she said.

Sir Simon naturally did not “pause for a reply,” but taking the blushing face in his hands, he imprinted a fatherly kiss on her forehead. To say that I was proud of my wife and delighted with the way she had behaved [pg 739] towards my two friends would be to convey a very inadequate idea of the state of my feelings. I was simply inebriated. It is hardly a figure of speech to say that I did not know whether I was on my head or my heels. I had looked forward to this meeting with an apprehension which, from being undefined, was none the less painful, and the relief I experienced at the successful issue was in proportion great. My step-mother was evidently quite as surprised, if in a less degree gratified than myself. The afternoon passed delightfully, chatting and walking about the park; my two old friends usurping Isabel completely, making love to her under my eyes in the most unscrupulous manner, quarrelling as to who should have her arm when out walking, and sit next to her when they came in. Isabel flirted with both, utterly regardless of my feelings, and even hinted to me at lunch that my prophecy with regard to Sir Simon ran a fair chance of coming true. She came down to dinner arrayed like a fairy, in a dress that seemed to have been made out of a sunset and trimmed with a rainbow. She had put on all her jewels—those I had chosen for her, and the diamonds that came to me from my mother. She wore pearls round her neck, and a row of diamond stars in her hair; while her arms almost disappeared under the variety of bracelets of every form and date with which she had loaded them. It may have been in questionable taste and not very sensible, but there was an innocent womanly vanity in thus seizing the first available opportunity of showing herself in her finery that I thought perfectly delightful. I could see, too, that the admiral and Sir Simon were pleased at the infantine coquetry, and not a little flattered by it. My step-mother alone looked coldly on the proceeding; and while Isabel, sitting between the two old gentlemen, pointed out for their special admiration “this bracelet, with the diamond true-lover's knot, that Clide gave me the day after we were engaged, and this blue enamel with the Greek word in pearls that he bought me the day before we came home,” Mrs. de Winton dissected her walnuts, and, setting her face like a flint, kept outside the conversation till the subject changed.

When we assembled in the drawing-room, Isabel opened a new battery of fascination that was perhaps the most formidable of all. She began to sing. The excitement of the jewels, and the sympathetic audience, and the conscious triumph of the hour, all added, no doubt, to the power and brilliancy of her voice, which sounded richer, fuller, more entrancing than I had ever heard it before. She sang all sorts of songs. The admiral asked for a sea-song. Isabel knew plenty, comic and dramatic, from “Rule Britannia” down to “A Life on the Ocean Wave,” which she rang out with a rollicking zest and spirit that fairly intoxicated the old sailor.

Sir Simon enjoyed an English ballad and an Irish melody. The siren gave him every one he asked for, old and new. In fact, she surpassed herself in witchery and skill, and one was at a loss which to admire most, the artless grace of the woman or the gifts and accomplishments of the artist. The evening passed rapidly away, and it was past midnight before any one thought of stirring.

“Clide,” said my step-mother next morning, as she was leaving the breakfast-room where Isabel and her guests were loitering over their tea-cups, while I read the Times in [pg 740] the window, “I wish to speak to you. Come to me in the library.”

And without waiting for an answer, she walked out. There was no reason why this commonplace invitation should have brought a sensation of cold down my back, and of my heart dropping down into my boots; but unaccountably this double phenomenon was effected in my person. I made a pretence of going through the leaders before I rose, and then, yawning to give myself an air of perfect satiety and ennui, I sauntered out of the breakfast-room, and bent my steps towards the audience-chamber.

“Clide,” began Mrs. de Winton, when I had closed the door and established myself on the hearth-rug, with my back to the fire, “where did your wife learn singing?”

“Why, in London, I suppose. Where else should she learn it?”

“Did you ask her?” inquired my inquisitor.

“It never occurred to me. Why should it?”

Mrs. de Winton looked at me curiously—not scornfully, as she was accustomed to do when I committed myself to any ultra-foolish remark. Indeed, I thought her face wore an expression gentler and kinder than I remembered to have seen there since when a child I had seen her look at my father. She said nothing for a minute. Then fixing her eyes on me with a glance that sent my heart right out through my heels:

“I have telegraphed to Simpson to come down by the early train to-day,” she said.

“The deuce you have!” I exclaimed, and, starting from my impassive attitude, I dropped my coat-tails, and stepped off the rug as if it had suddenly turned into a hot plate.

“Yes,” continued Mrs. de Winton, quite unmoved by my complimentary ejaculation, “it is my duty, since you are too indifferent to your own interest to take the....”

“Clide, Clide! Where are you?” cried a sweet voice from the terrace, and, running up the slopes, Isabel flattened her nose against the window, peering into the room in search of me. I was so placed that she could not see me, but she saw my step-mother. Glad to escape from what threatened to be a stormy interview, I flew to the window, opened it, and rejoined my wife.

“Was she scolding you?” asked Isabel, casting a puzzled glance towards the room where I had so unceremoniously “planted” my step-mother.

“No, darling,” I answered, laughing.

“What was she saying?” inquired Isabel.

“What an inquisitive little puss it is!” I said, partly amused and partly at a nonplus for a satisfactory answer.

“Tell me. I'll go, if you don't!” And she prepared to carry out the threat by unlocking her hands and letting go my arm.

But I seized the refractory hands, and held them tight.

“Go!” I said, laughing at her in a most tantalizing way, while she struggled in vain to set herself free.

“Tell me what you were talking about. I insist on knowing, Clide!” repeated Isabel, stamping her foot like a naughty child.

I began to dread a repetition of the other morning. Such an exhibition within hearing of my uncle and Sir Simon would have been so mortifying to my pride that I was ready to sign away my lawful authority for the rest of my married life rather than undergo it; so pretending not to notice the gathering thunder-clouds:

[pg 741]

“My lovely tyrant!” I said, caressing her with the sweetest of smiles, as we walked past the drawing-room window, “you don't suspect me of having a secret my wife should not share? I was only chaffing you just now for fun, you looked so mystified. But the fact is, I was put out by the old lady's telling me she expected Simpson down here to-day.”

“And who is Simpson?” inquired Isabel.

“The family lawyer.”

“Ah! Did you tell her to send for him?”

“I tell her! Why, child, if I had, I shouldn't have been put out to hear he was coming.”

The question was unpleasantly suggestive. It implied a suspicion in her mind, which something in my tone resented, probably, for she added quickly:

“Oh! of course not. I didn't mean that.”

Then we went on a few steps without speaking.

“Simpson's a capital fellow,” I resumed, breaking the pause that was rather awkward. “I'm very fond of him, and shouldn't the least object to his coming down here at any other time; only just now it's a bore. We wanted to have my uncle and Sir Simon all to ourselves. However, I dare say you'll like Simpson too when you see him, though he is of the race of Philistines. If he's a shrewd lawyer, he's a trusty friend and as honest as the sun. No fear of my ‘doing’ my heiress wife in the settlements,” I continued laughingly, “or cheating her out of any of her lawful rights, while old Dominie Simpson has the whip-hand over me!”

“He's to be here to-day, you said?” she remarked interrogatively, as we entered the house.

“Yes. If he comes by the early train, he may be in time for dinner,” I replied.

Mr. Simpson did come by the early train, and he was in time for dinner. He was even an hour and a half beforehand with it, and spent most of the intervening time closeted with my step-mother in her private apartment.

My wife appeared in a second edition of sunset and rainbow, and flashed and sparkled with jewels as on the previous evening.

She received our old friend very graciously, drawing just the right line of demarcation between her friendly graciousness to him and the daughter-like familiarity of her manner towards Sir Simon and her uncle. Dinner passed off very merrily; but when we rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room, I was surprised to find Isabel fast asleep in the depths of a monumental arm-chair. She jumped up at the sound of my voice, and, rubbing her eyes, said she was ashamed to be caught napping, but she was so tired!

“Hollo, Simpson, this is a sorry lookout for you!” exclaimed the admiral. “We've been telling him to get ready his legal soul to be charmed and devoured by the siren.”

“Oh! I am so sorry,” said Isabel, looking at the old lawyer as if nothing in this world could give her half so much pleasure as to charm away his soul on the spot; “but these naughty gentlemen kept me up so late last night, and made me sing so much, that I have not a note in my voice to-night, and I'm just dead with sleep.”

Simpson looked wofully disappointed.

“My pretty pet,” said the admiral, drawing her to him and stroking her head as if she had been a kitten, “then you sha'n't sing!”

[pg 742]

“If you should lie down for half an hour, dearest,” I said, “do you think that would rest you, and you might be able to give us just one song?”

I was anxious that Simpson should hear her. He sang a very good song himself, and his heart seemed set on it.

“Perhaps,” she said, brightening up. “I'll try, at any rate.”

I gave her my arm, and we went up-stairs together to her room.

“Don't come in, or else we'll begin to talk, and that will wake me up,” she said, seeing me about to enter; “and I'm so dead with sleep I'm sure I shall be off in five minutes, if you leave me.”

I did as she wished, and returned to the drawing-room, where I found my step-mother in conclave with the three men on more practical matters than songs and sirens.

Simpson had been summoned for the sole purpose of discussing and settling what ought in the proper course of things to have been discussed and settled before my marriage, and Sir Simon Harness was just as anxious as Mrs. de Winton that everything should be made straight and clear with regard to Isabel's fortune and my due control over it. The admiral alone was indifferent about it, and exhibited a sailor-like contempt for the whole affair—in fact, intimated that it was out of all sense and reason and morality that I should have got a penny of fortune with such a wife.

“I call it immoral, sir,” he declared, scowling at me from under his bushy eyebrows; “you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“And so I am, my dear uncle,” I replied hastily. “And that's just why I hate having the subject attacked in this precipitate way, as if I wanted to grab up her money the moment I could lay my hands upon it.”

“Then you can lay your hands upon it?” observed Simpson quietly.

“If I choose,” I said; “my wife is of age, and....”

“Of age!” echoed the admiral, throwing up his hands in amaze. “Why, I should have given the child fifteen at most!”

“She looks young,” I remarked coolly, while interiorly I was bursting with conceit; “but she is of age, so there is no reason in the world why I should bother myself or her about this confounded fortune; besides, I don't care a rap if I never see a penny of it!”

“Bravo, Clide! That's right, my boy!” cried my uncle, clapping me soundly on the back. “You're a chip of the old block, and it does my heart good to hear you. Why, when I was a youngster, ...”

“De Winton,” interrupted Sir Simon, “don't you think you had better retire to the piano? Simpson has not come down all the way from London to be entertained with the follies of your youth. It's most important that we should have his opinion about these matters; and if you can't hold your tongue or talk sense, you had better make yourself scarce.”

“Talk on,” said the admiral; “I won't hinder you.” And so they did. I sat there, feeling as if I were on my trial for some sort of misdemeanor, the nature of which was unknown to me, but the consequences of which would be probably appalling if the misdemeanor could be brought home to me. Sir Simon and my step-mother were judge and jury, Simpson was counsel for some mythical antagonist, and the admiral stood by in the capacity of a neutral but benevolent spectator. Both counsel and judge had been made acquainted [pg 743] by Mrs. de Winton with all she had to tell. How much or how little that might be, in Mrs. de Winton's opinion, I could not say. But clearly on some shallow inductive evidence she had made out a case vaguely unfavorable for my wife. No one accused her of anything. Not a word was said that my irritable pride could take hold of and resent. They spoke of her as a child whose innocence and ignorance made it doubly incumbent on them to legislate for and protect, since I was unfit for the duty, while my morbid delicacy they ignored as beneath contempt.

“We must keep him out of it altogether, I see,” observed Sir Simon when the conversation had lasted about half an hour. “Leave me to deal with the child. She won't suspect me of having married her for her money.”

There was no gainsaying this. Still, I was entering a protest against the way in which my wishes were being set at naught, when tea was brought in and cut me short.

“Go and see if Isabel be awake, Clide,” said my uncle, glad to put an end to the subject; “but don't disturb her if she's asleep. She's not to be worried for old fogies like us, mind.”

I ran up the stairs lightly, and opened the door as stealthily as a thief. The light was out. “Isabel!” I said in a low voice. No answer.

I closed the door as noiselessly as I had opened it, and returned to the drawing-room.

“She's as fast asleep as a baby, uncle,” I said. “So I followed your advice, and left her to sleep it out.”

“Poor little pet! We kept her at it too long last night. You must not do this sort of thing again, Clide,” observed Sir Simon. “It's a delicate flower that you've got there, and you must take care of it.”

I expressed my hearty concurrence in this opinion and advice.

Isabel's absence made a great blank in the evening; but as my three friends had not met for a considerable time, and I had not seen them for more than a year, we had a great deal to say to each other, and there was no lack of conversation. Mrs. de Winton remained with us till eleven, when she withdrew, leaving us to discuss punch and politics by ourselves. It was past midnight when we separated. I went into my dressing-room. The candles were lighted, but, contrary to his custom, Stanton, my man, was not there. I rang the bell; but while my hand was still on the rope, the sound of his voice reached me through the door—not the outer door, but the door leading into my wife's room. He was speaking in a loud, argumentative tone, and was stuttering violently, which he always did when excited. I flung open the door, and beheld him standing in the middle of the room with Susette, my wife's maid, and Mrs. de Winton, who was wrapped in a dressing-gown and her feet bare, as if she had been called suddenly out of bed, and had rushed in in terrified haste.

“Clide!”

“Monsieur!”

“Sir ...” exclaimed the three in one voice when they saw me.

“Good God! what is the matter? Isabel!”

I flew to the bed and drew back the curtains.

The bed was empty.

My wife was gone!

Here Clide's journal breaks off. A long gap ensues, and we must fill it up from the recollections of others. The scene that followed the discovery of his young wife's flight was not to be described. First, it was incredulity [pg 744] that filled the old Moat. “Gone! Fled! Nonsense!” protested Admiral de Winton, walking up and down the corridor, where he had rushed out in semi-nocturnal attire when Stanton had burst into his room with the dreadful intelligence. The old sailor was scarcely to be recognized in the déshabillé of his coatless and wigless person, as he blustered loudly, his hands in his pockets, zigzagging to and fro as if he were pacing the quarter-deck and expostulating angrily with a surly crew.

Sir Simon Harness was calmer. He did not contradict his friend's vehement assertion that it was all a trick of Isabel's to terrify us; he even made a show of pooh-poohing the notion of a flight as absurd, ridiculous, not to be entertained for a moment. But there was not that heartiness in his voice or manner that carries conviction to others. Mrs. de Winton also made a semblance of chiming in with the admiral's view, but it was a palpable failure. Mr. Simpson was the only one who did not try to act his part in the kindly comedy. He was fully convinced that it was no comedy, but a most miserable drama that was beginning for the son of his old friend and client. He had mistrusted Isabel from the first moment he fixed his keen, legal vision on her. Mrs. de Winton had, it is true, inoculated him beforehand with a good share of her own mistrust, and he came to the scrutiny with a jaundiced eye; prejudiced, and predetermined not to be fascinated or beguiled out of his severest judgment. He regarded hers as a case of which he was to take a strictly legal view, and which was to be investigated, sifted, and proved before he would endorse it. It was a very odd case on the face of it; but Benjamin Simpson had had many odd cases to deal with in the course of his experience, and he flattered himself he was not to be baffled by a child scarcely out of her teens. She might be very clever, and succeed in hoodwinking a rich young gentleman into marrying her, on the strength of a fictitious story of misery and a still more fictitious one of heiresship; but she was not likely to stand Simpson's cross-examination long without breaking down. Such ungallant reflections as these had been passing through the lawyer's brain while he sipped his claret and watched the fair face that sat opposite to him at the dinner-table, glancing at him with eyes that flashed more brightly than her jewels. He had made up his mind, as he looked at her, that she was a delusion; she would disappear sooner or later. The news of her flight was therefore only a surprise by its suddenness. Clide was rushing all over the basement story, calling out Isabel's name into every room, while Mrs. de Winton and her own and Isabel's maid were pursuing a similar search in the upper part of the house. The rambling old mansion was echoing from end to end with opening and shutting of doors and cries of the fugitive's name; but no answer was heard except the echoes of the voices and the doors.

“My dear boy,” said the admiral, pausing on his imaginary quarterdeck, as Clide came up the stairs, “I'll stake my head on it, the sly little puss is playing a game of hide-and-seek with us, and laughing fit to kill herself in some cupboard or other, while we are kicking up this row; take my word for it, the best thing we can do is to go quietly to our own beds, and before long she'll come out of her hiding-place.”

Clide muttered an impatient “stuff and nonsense!” Was she likely to perish herself such a night as this [pg 745] playing hide-and-seek for their amusement—she that could not bear a breath of cold? Even crossing through a fireless room she would shiver like an aspen. The admiral grunted something about “deserving to be whipped,” and turned to his zigzag promenade again.

Stanton and some of the other men-servants had gone out to scour the park and the gardens; they had been absent now long enough to have discovered something, if there was anything to discover, but the stars made no answer to their calling. “Madame! Mistress!” they shouted, till at last they gave it up, and retraced their steps to the house. Clide had been going to the window in a restless way, looking out into the night, and listening as if he expected to hear the silence send him back some sign. It was impossible to say whether he believed the least bit in the hide-and-seek theory, whether he had a lingering hope of hearing Isabel call out to him or appear from some corner, or whether he was just in that condition of mind that precludes alike sitting still or doing something. He might be excited by hope, or he might be stupefied by despair. He was as white as ashes, and came and went with the quick, unsteady gait of a man who has lost his self-command, and is swayed only by the force of some terrible emotion. Clide's face was a fine, manly one; it would have been noble but for the weakness of the chin and a certain tremulous movement of the lower lip—perhaps of both; for the upper one was shaded by a light-brown moustache that prevented you seeing whether it had the firmness that would have redeemed the lower one. The eyes were expressive, rather sleepy when the face was in repose; but they woke up with flashes of lightning when he was excited, and transfigured the whole countenance into one of energy and power. There was no need to be a physiognomist to judge of the character of such a face. The most unskilled observer could read it like a book. There were all the elements of a stormy life there—passive strength, and passions that needed only a spark to kindle them into a flame; a man who, as he was taken, would be as easily led as a lamb or as intractable as a young hyena. He had started in life with the fixed purpose of steering clear of storms, of saving himself trouble and avoiding fuss. Poor Clide! Life, he fancied, had a lake of oil at the entrance of the wide sea where storms blew and waves roared angrily, and he had made up his mind to anchor in the lake, and never venture beyond its peaceful margin.

The servants had come back—those that had been scouring the park—and the others, who had been slamming doors all through the house, were congregating in twos and threes upon the stairs leading to the broad landing off which their young mistress' room stood, its door wide open, with a dismal, vacant air about it already.

“I see her! There she is!” exclaimed Clide. He had been staring for some minutes out of the window, and suddenly bounded down the great oak stairs, and out in the path, making for a clump of laurel-trees far down near the water. The admiral, Sir Simon, Simpson, and Mrs. de Winton pressed into the embrasure of the window, the servants peeping over their heads to catch a sight of the figure he was pursuing; but they saw nothing except the winter trees, that stood like silver against the sky, while their straggling shadows lay black upon the lawn. Still Clide bounded on, calling out Isabel! [pg 746] Isabel! as he ran, and still no sound answered him; the thud of his footfall on the frosty grass came sharply distinct in the silence.

“The boy is dazed!” muttered his uncle; “it was a shadow he saw. But, no! By Jove, there she is!” Clide was now close upon the laurels, that looked like a black mound in the moonlight. The group in the window saw a white, crouching figure rise slowly at his approach; he stopped, uttered a cry of disappointment, and turned drearily back towards the house.

“What is it? Who is it?” shouted several voices; but before Clide answered a moonbeam lighted up the figure of a deer, as it glided lightly over the sward, and disappeared into the distant copse.

Instead of entering the house at once, Clide wandered round towards the stables. It occurred to him that something in that region might suggest a clew to the mode of his wife's escape. He was quickly undeceived. Every door was locked. There was no sign of any horse having disturbed the slumbers of its companions.

“There is no use in your passing the night out of doors,” said Sir Simon, who came to see where Clide had gone. “Come in, and let us put our heads together to see what is to be done. I'm inclined to believe with De Winton that it is a trick, and that the foolish child is amusing herself at seeing us all out of doors searching for her.”

Whether this was honest or not, Clide felt it was meant in kindness. He let his old friend draw his arm within his and lead him back into the house. It was lighted up as for an impromptu illumination; every servant, male and female, was afoot, and they had busied themselves in and out of all the up-stair rooms that for years had been untenanted; and as it was necessary to do something, they lighted candles.

“Suppose it is not a trick!” said Clide, looking into Sir Simon's face with a terrible question in his eyes.

“That's what we have got to find out,” replied the baronet evasively. “Meantime, come up and let us hear what the others have to say.”

They had nothing to say. Presently Mrs. de Winton remarked:

“I wonder what dress she had on? If she kept on her jewels, and that light gauze one, with the low body and short sleeves, she wore at dinner, she can't have gone far.”

They, went into the empty room to investigate. The jewels were gone, every one she had worn; there were the empty cases. But the light gauze dress was there hanging in the wardrobe, as if her maid had carefully put it away. What she had put on to replace it was the next point which Mr. Simpson insisted on clearing up. All the elegant dresses of the young bride's trousseau were tossed out of drawers and wardrobes by Susette—Susette had been engaged for her by Clide himself after their marriage—and counted over, till one was found missing in the roll: the claret-colored silk in which she had travelled down from London, and had never worn since. It was the most appropriate dress of all she had for a midnight flight, and, being dark, would escape observation. Mr. Simpson seized immediately on this, “making a point” of it in his legal way, that so exasperated Clide he could have flown at the lawyer's throat and strangled him on the spot. He resisted the impulse, and turned away, inviting Mrs. de Winton by a sign to go with him. He walked into his own dressing-room, and, when his step-mother had followed him, he closed the door, and took [pg 747] a turn in the room with a quick, passionate step.

“What in the name of heaven can it be?” he said, stopping abruptly and coming close up to her, as she stood by the mantel-piece.

“She is gone,” answered his step-mother. “I hardly doubted it for an instant. I have been expecting some such catastrophe for several days past. If you ask me why, I cannot tell you. I somehow never trusted.... My dear Clide,” she continued in an earnest tone of kindness, quite unlike her usual cold manner to him, “I wish with all my heart I could do something or say something to comfort you or help you. Can you throw no light at all on it from your own knowledge of things? Is there nothing in what you know, or in what you do not know, about her antecedents and connections to help you to form some guess? Where can she have gone to, and who has she gone with?”

Clide clenched his hand, and moved away with an expression of anguish that was dreadful.

“Gone to!” he repeated suddenly. “Why, what fools we are not to have seen to that at once! But it's not too late....” He pulled out his watch.... “It's just three-quarters of an hour since we missed her. Sir Simon and I will saddle a couple of horses and ride both ways, for Glanivold and Lanfarl. If she is making for either, we may overtake her.”

He was going to the door, but Mrs. de Winton laid her hand on his arm. “Not three-quarters of an hour since we missed her, but she may be gone more than three hours. It was scarcely eight o'clock when she came up-stairs to lie down, and now it's ten minutes past twelve. Supposing she's gone to the station....”

“Nonsense!” broke in Clide; “the station is three hours' walk from this. She could no more do it than an infant.”

“I'm only supposing; one must suppose something,” replied his step-mother patiently. “The train leaves at a quarter to twelve; so if that were her object, it is too late to stop her.”

“There's something too absurd in the idea! It's simply impossible!” declared Clide with a vehemence that carried no sense of conviction with it—rather the contrary. “It's absurd to contemplate it,” he repeated; “but if you would sleep easier for having the thing certified, I'll jump into the saddle, and ride to the station and inquire.”

“Inquire what? Consider what you are going to do, Clide,” said Mrs. de Winton, holding him back firmly—“raise a hue and cry after your wife as if she were a runaway thief! Suppose it turns out after all to be a trick, and that we see her emerge out of some closet or corner before you come back; how will you look after sending it over the country that your wife disappeared one night? Do you imagine the world will believe the story of the game of hide-and-seek?”

Before he could reply Sir Simon and the admiral burst into the room.

“We found this on her dressing-table,” said the admiral, handing his nephew a note. Clide took it. A cold chill ran through his blood. He tore open the letter. It ran thus:

“Clide, I am going to leave you. I don't ask you to forgive me. You can never do that. But God help me! I shall suffer for having so wickedly deceived you. I should not have been worthy of you, even if I had been as true as I have been false. But I loved you, and I shall never love anybody else. Don't try [pg 748] to find me. You will never find me. Good-by, Clide. Forget me and be happy.

“Your wicked but remorseful and loving

Isabel.”

The letter dropped from the young man's hand, and he fell to the ground with a cry.

We return to Clide's journal:

The sun was shining over the sea—the strong-waved sea that washes the northern coast of France, the country of legends and cider, and gray ruins and chivalry, and all that survives in the France of to-day of the France of long ago, the “plaisant pays de France” that poets sang to Marie Stuart in her happy days of young queenhood. There to the right, as the steamer paddled towards the port, stood the cliff where William of Normandy harangued his Norsemen before they embarked with him to snatch from Harold by force the crown he had not been able by fraud to prevent his assuming. Dieppe lay twinkling in the sunlight below, a town of gossip and carved ivory and many odors. As we entered the harbor, a strain of wild, plaintive music came floating towards us from the shore. It was the hymn of the fishermen's wives, pulling the fishing smacks along the pier. Children were toddling by the side of the mothers, and clutching by the rope with their small fingers, while their shrill trebles piped in chorus with the elders. A pretty picture, if I had been in a mood to admire it. But the gloom within quenched all the brightness without.

The boat was steered alongside the quay, where half the town, it seemed to me, had assembled to jeer at our pea-green faces, as we emerged from our separate purgatories and staggered up the gangway. I never feel so thorough a misanthrope as when I see my fellow-creatures enjoying the humiliation of my steamboat misery, and hear them chuckling over me as I pass along the plank that leads from deck to dry land. On this particular occasion I remember with what a vehemence of hatred I resented their inhumanity, and I assumed as defiant an air as was compatible with my abject bodily and mental condition, as I marched on with my fellow-victims, and passed between two hedges of eager, staring eyes. My uncle was with me. But he was not abject. He was far removed from such a wretched infirmity as sea-sickness, and nothing but his kindheartedness prevented him from joining with the chucklers who were making merry at our expense. It was almost an aggravation of my own suffering to see the intensity of his sympathy, the way in which he was perpetually mounting guard beside me to ward off any random shaft that the chance remarks of others every now and then aimed at me.

I had now spent six weary months prosecuting my search, the most extraordinary and unfortunate that ever man was engaged in, and up to the day I started for Dieppe I had failed to obtain the smallest clew. I had left nothing untried. I had stimulated the activity of Scotland Yard by reckless liberality; I had set the whole detective force in motion, but to no purpose.

I had had recourse to the mysterious column in the Times for months together; but the agony of feeling that my appeals to Isabel to “come back to her husband, or communicate with him by letter,” was making all the breakfast-tables in the kingdom laugh, brought no response from the fugitive herself. All this time my uncle seconded me by his exertions and supported me by his kindness. [pg 749] I think I should have gone mad, if it had not been for him. He never tired of my lamentations, my long, sullen fits of gloom, the wearisome refrain of my self-reproach, my endless wondering at the behavior of Isabel, and my cursing and swearing at the stupidity of the Scotland Yard people. He bore with me as patiently as a mother with a sick child. My step-mother had talked him into her belief that Isabel had been on the stage, and that the most likely place to hear of her would be amongst managers and play-actors. There was something utterly revolting to me in this notion, and I burst out into such uncontrollable anger one day when my uncle was arguing in favor of it with a degree of sense that was quite unanswerable, that he determined never to broach the supposition again to me. This did not prevent him from following up the idea by employing agents in every direction to hunt the theatres both of London and the provincial towns. Meanwhile, I was secretly doing the same. I could not look the thing bravely in the face, even with him; but I had in my innermost heart a dread, amounting at times to certainty, that he was right, and that if ever I found my wife it would be in the green-room or on the stage. I discovered afterwards that my dear old uncle knew perfectly well the game I was playing, but he left me under the delusion that he believed in my disbelief, and so spared me the shame I morbidly shrank from. More than once a false alarm led me to fancy that these were realized, and that she was in the hands of a manager, and then my sensation was one of poignant misery, almost of despair. While I knew nothing I might yet hope. My feelings resembled that of the French miser who, while looking for the will that if found would rob him of a legacy, confessed naively: “Je cherche en priant Dieu de ne pas trouver.”

I was sitting at breakfast in my lodgings in Piccadilly one morning when my uncle came suddenly in, and said abruptly:

“You told me once that the sign by which the police could positively identify her was a silver tooth?”

“Yes,” I replied, and my heart thumped against my ribs; “a silver tooth in the left jaw, rather far back.”

“Did it never occur to you to make inquiries amongst the dentists?”

“No, that never occurred to me! But now that you mention it, it seems very strange that it should not. I quite remember her speaking to me of a clever one who had put in the silver tooth for her; how he had at first been obstinate and annoyed about it, and then when it was done how pleased he was with it. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before!” I cried in vexation; “but to-morrow I will begin and set inquiries on foot in this direction.”

“You needn't trouble about it,” said my uncle; “I've found the man who did it.”

“You have!” I cried. “And he has seen her! He has told you something! For heaven's sake, uncle, speak at once. What does the man know?”

“No great things,” answered my uncle, stepping from the hearth-rug, where he had been standing with his back to the clock, and flinging himself into an arm-chair. “It seems that your step-mother's fancy was the right one after all; the child was brought up for public singing, and she was here ten days ago. For aught this dentist can tell, she may be here still; but I think not. She came to him to have something [pg 750] done to this identical silver tooth. It was hurting her, and she was in a great state about it, because she had just got an engagement to sing at a provincial theatre this season; she didn't say where, but the last time he saw her—she went to him for several days running—she was fidgetting about the weather—you remember we had some stiffish gales last week—and wondering what sort of passage the people would have who were crossing the Channel with the wind so high. He could give me no idea what port she had in her mind, or in fact anything but just what I tell you. Well, I thought it was as well to make inquiries before I set you on the go again, so I telegraphed to the police at all the French ports, and just a minute ago I got this from Dieppe.”

He handed the telegram to me: “Beautiful young woman, answers to description. Landed on Saturday; sings to-night. Hôtel Royal. Elderly man with her.” There was not a doubt in my mind but that this was Isabel. The elderly man must be the villain who passed himself off as her uncle. I said so; my uncle agreed with me.

“The dentist fellow described him just as you do,” he continued—“a gruff old man, with a brown coat and broad-brimmed hat, and a disagreeable snuffle when he talked. He used to go with her a year ago, when she got the silver tooth made, and he was with her the other day. And now, my boy, when are we to start for Dieppe? Let's look at the time-table.”

We started by the tidal train, and reached Dieppe about five p.m. that evening. It was the season, and every hotel was brimful of English and French fashion, come to bathe itself in the briny wave of that strong salt sea. We went straight to the Hôtel Royal, but the landlord had not even a garret where he could put up a bed for us. The lodging-houses in the whole length of the Rue Aguado were overflowing, and we were finally driven to explore the Faubourg de la Barre, where we were thankful to be taken in by a garrulous old landlady, who showed us two small rooms on the first floor. I was not in a frame of mind to quarrel with the accommodation, but I heard the admiral relieving himself in strong vernacular on the corkscrew staircase.

We deposited our light impedimenta in these lodgings, and then went out to see what information was to be gathered concerning the object of our journey. The first thing we beheld on entering the Grande Rue was a placard announcing “La Sonnambula” for that evening; the prima donna was to be a “gifted young soprano débutante, Signorina Graziella.” We went to the box-office; every place was taken, and we had only a prospect of standing-room in the space between the first tier and the balcony. The prima donna had been heralded by such a flourish of trumpets that the whole population was eager to hear her—so the box-keeper informed us.

By this time it was six o'clock; but I was fed by something stronger than meat, and it never occurred to me that since my breakfast, which had been suspended before I was half through it, I had tasted no food. My uncle's sympathy, however, being of the healthiest kind, was not proof against the demands of nature, and he suggested that it was time to think of dinner. I was ashamed of having so entirely forgotten his comfort in my own absorbing preoccupation, and proposed that we should go to the table-d'hôte of the Hôtel Royal, which was served at six. I [pg 751] would have eaten merely to keep him company; but the first spoonful of soup seemed to choke me. The brave old sailor was near losing temper with me at last, and vowed that he would wash his hands of me if I didn't eat my dinner. He had roughed it on many a heavy sea, and in nine cases out of ten it was his hearty appetite that kept him afloat and pulled him through. In any case, he would not admit fasting to be an element in sentiment with rational human beings. He called for a bottle of Château Lafitte, and insisted on my helping him to empty it. I did my best, and the result was that before dinner was over the generous wine repaid me for the effort, and enabled me to take, if not a more hopeful, at any rate a less utterly disconsolate, view of life, and of the particular chapter of it I was now passing through. It had a still kinder effect on my uncle; his heart soon warmed by the juice of the red grape to such an extent that he talked of my miserable position cheerfully, as if it had been the most ordinary occurrence, and as if there was no reason why I should despond about it at all. He persisted in treating Isabel as a naughty child who had never been taught submission to the rules of life, and broke through them the moment she found they trammelled her. It was no unprecedented event for an excitable young thing to go mad about the stage; there were, on the contrary, plenty of instances of it. He could count them on his fingers—young ladies who had gone quite mad about it, and who had calmed down, when the freak was over, into excellent wives and mothers. Why should not this silly little puss do the same? I did not dare remind him of those terrible words, written in her own hand: “If I were as true as I have been false.”

It was a solace to hear him rambling on in his good-natured, foolish talk. Only when he repeated with stout emphasis for the tenth time that she was herself the victim and dupe of the designing old scoundrel who called her his niece, I ventured to remark: “But Simpson says....” “Simpson is an ass!” snarled my uncle, and I at once assented, and declared my belief that Simpson was an ass.

The moment we had finished our Château Lafitte we rose and left the crowded room, where new-comers were still pouring in to seize upon every seat as it was vacated. I had been casting uneasy glances towards the door, after first quickly scanning the three hundred heads that were bobbing up and down over as many soup-plates when we entered; but my fears were vain. Isabel was not likely to run such a risk, if she wished—as evidently she did wish—to remain undiscovered. I overheard some persons near us discussing the appearance of the prima donna, who, they observed, never showed herself off the stage. Many curious idlers had wasted hours lolling about the hotel door, in hopes of seeing her come out to walk or bathe; but since she had been in Dieppe—four days now—no one had caught a glimpse of her. They little dreamed, as they bandied this gossip with one another, that they were stabbing a heart with every word. The persistent avoidance of notice was but too significant to me of the prima donna's identity. It wanted yet half an hour of the time for the theatre, and my uncle said we might as well spend it inhaling the fresh breeze that was blowing from the north, borne in by the advancing tide. He linked his arm in mine, and we sauntered down to the beach. The waves were breaking in low thunder-sobs upon [pg 752] the shingles, and all the town that was not dining was out of doors watching them. The Etablissement was crowded, and the music of the band that was playing there came floating towards us with every roll of the waves; but the hum of the chattering crowd rose distinctly above the sobbing of the sea and the murmur of the more distant orchestra. I was too excited, too absorbed in my own thoughts, to realize distinctly anything around me, but I quite well remember how I was impressed in a vague yet vivid way by the contrast between the sad, majestic tide heaving and surging on one side, and the human stream rippling to and fro on the other, dressed out in such tawdry gear, and simpering and chattering and subsiding like the frothy foam on the billows. I can remember, too, how I turned, irritated and sick, from the sight of it to the prettier, purer one of children playing on the sward beside the beach. The peals of their innocent laughter did not jar upon me; there was no discord between it and the dirge-like sound of the water washing the shore. All this passed and repassed before me like something in a dream.

But the time was hurrying on, and now I was impatient to see my doom with my own eyes, or to know that the reprieve was prolonged, and that I might yet cling to a plank of hope.

“I think it's time we were going,” I remarked, pulling out my watch; “the crowd is thinning, and I suppose it is bound in the same direction.” We were late, as I expected; every spot was filled in the little theatre when we arrived, and the performance had begun. As the box-keeper opened the door to admit us to our standing-post on the first tier, we were almost thrown back by the roar of applause that burst upon our ears; it rose and fell like a mighty gust of wind, and seemed literally to make the ground shake under our feet and the walls tremble round us. For a moment I was stunned. There was a lull, and then we went in. The singer had left the stage, but the air was still vibrating with the melody of her voice and of the rapturous echoes it had awakened. A fine barytone was confiding his despair and his hopes to the audience, but it fell idly on their ears after what had gone before. The Sonnambula appeared again; the first notes were greeted by another salvo of bravos, louder, more impassioned and prolonged, than the first; again and again the plaudits rose, handkerchiefs fluttered, and hands clapped—the house was electrified. She could bear it no longer; overcome by emotion, she held out her arms to the spectators in an entreating gesture that seemed to say: “Enough! Spare me; I can bear no more!” It was either an impulse of childlike nature or the most finished piece of art ever seen on the stage. Whatever it was, the effect was tremendous. I suppose it could not really have been so, but I would have sworn that the house rocked. It was a sustained roll of human thunder from the pit to the gallery, and from the gallery to the pit. Isabel—for it was she—made another passionate response with the same childlike, bewitching grace, and rushed off the scene. I was rooted to the spot, not daring to look at my uncle; not thinking of him, of anything. I was like a man in a nightmare, held fast in the grasp of a spectre, longing to call for help, but powerless to utter a sound.

The manager came forward and addressed a few words of expostulation to the audience; implored them to control their ecstasies a little for [pg 753] the sake of the sensitive and gifted being who had called them forth. He was nervous and at the same time triumphant. He was answered by a loud buzz of assent. The Sonnambula once more came forth, and this time a deep, suppressed murmur was the only interruption. The dress, the glare, the gaslight, the strange way the lustrous coils of her black hair were arranged—tumbled in a sort of studied tangle all over the forehead—while a veil, half on, half off, concealed part of the face, the entire transformation of the mise-en-scène, in fact, might easily have disguised her identity from eyes less preternaturally keen than mine; but my glance had scarcely fallen on the frail, shrouded figure, as it glided in from the background, than I knew that I beheld my wife; beheld her clasped—gracious heavens! yes, I saw it, and stood there motionless and dumb—clasped by the man who was howling out some idiotic lamentations. She stepped forward, and began to sing. Her head was first slightly bowed over her breast, and her hands clasped and hanging. The first bars were warbled out in a kind of bird-like whisper, as if she were in a dream; but little by little they grew higher, more sonorous, until, carried away by the power of the music and her own magnificent interpretation of it, she flung back her head, and let the gossamer cloud fall from it, revealing the unshrouded contour of the face, upturned, inspired, all alight with the triumph of the hour, while the bell-like notes rang out with a breadth and pathos that melted and stirred every heart in that vast crowd like touches of fire. It was a vision of beauty that defies all words. I neither spoke nor moved while the song lasted; but when the last chord died out, and the pent-up hearts of the listeners broke forth in new peals that seemed to sweep over the songstress in a flood of joy and triumph, I awoke and came to my senses.

“Come away!” I gasped, and turned to move out. But the words stuck in my throat. My uncle had caught the delirium, and was cheering and bravoing like a maniac. “Glorious! Grand, by Jove! Encore! Splendid!” He was shouting like a madman, whirling his hat and stamping. His brown face was young again. I never beheld such a transformation in any human countenance.

“Are you mad, sir?” I shrieked into his ear, while I clutched his arm.

I suppose he was mad; I know he kept on the same frantic shouts and clappings for several minutes, not paying any more heed to me than to the floor he was so vigorously stamping. I was frightened at last. I thought anguish and shame for me had driven him out of his mind; so, taking him gently by the arm, I said I wanted to speak to him. He let me push him on before me, and we got out. He was still much excited, and neither of us spoke till we were in the open air.

“My dear boy,” he said suddenly, with a shamefaced look, “I couldn't help it for the life of me! By Jove, but it was the grandest thing I ever heard in my life. The house reeled round you. I would stake my head there wasn't a sane man in it but yourself!”

I laughed bitterly. The irony of the words was dreadful. “Sane?” I cried. “You think I was sane? I thank heaven I behaved like a sane man; but if I had been within reach of that ruffian's throat, I'd have dashed his brains out as ruthlessly as any escaped maniac from Bedlam. I would do it now, if I had him!”

[pg 754]

My uncle stopped and looked at me. He was thoroughly sobered, and I could see that he was terrified. He told me long afterwards that he never could have believed passion could transfigure a face as it did mine; he said I had murder written in my eyes as plainly as ever it was written on a printed page. And I believe him. I felt I could have committed murder at that moment. I would have killed that man, if I had held him, if the gallows had been there to hang me the next hour. I have never felt the same towards murderers since that moment. It was an awful revelation to me of the hidden springs of crime that may lie deep down in a man's heart, and never be suspected even by himself, until the touch that can wake them into deadly life has come. I can never think of that evening without an humbling sense of my own innate wickedness, of the benign mercy that overruled that frightful impulse. Given the immediate opportunity and the absence of the supreme, supervening goodness that stood between me and myself, and I should have been a murderer. The gulf that separates each one of us from crime is narrower than we imagine. The discovery of this truth is humbling, but perhaps none the less salutary for that.

“Come along, Clide; come along with me,” my uncle said in the soothing tone one uses to a fractious child. “It's all my fault. I ought to have known better than to let you go there at all; I ought to have gone by myself. I'm no better than a blubbering old idiot to you, my boy.”

I went with him passively; we walked to our lodgings without speaking. I shall never forget the kindness of my uncle all through that night. He was as patient and as gentle with me as a woman, bearing with me as tenderly as a mother could have done. I could not rest, and I would not let him rest. I called for café noir, and I kept drinking cup after cup of it until, added to the stronger stimulant that was setting my blood on fire, I almost worked myself into a brain fever, bursting out into paroxysms of childish rebellion, and then lapsing into fits of dumb despair. I had first insisted on rushing off to the hotel and lying in wait for Isabel, and compelling her there and then either to return to me or to part from me for ever; but my uncle was inexorable in opposing this, and I knew by his tone that he was not to be trifled with. There was a something about him in certain moods that made resistance to his will as impossible as wrestling with an elephant. I gave in, and allowed him to give his reasons for preventing my taking a step which, result how it might, was sure to be a most humiliating one for me; not only or chiefly as a husband, but as a De Winton. My uncle's anxiety lest the old name should suffer by the event threw his sympathy for my individual sorrow comparatively into the shade. While my wife's flight was known only to my immediate household, my step-mother—whose pride and touchiness about the honor of a De Winton was almost as morbid as his own—and the three tried friends of my dear father's youth, it was just possible that it might remain a secret beyond that small circle, and he clung to this hope as tenaciously as I did to the hope of recovering my wife. The De Wintons were a proud race, and justly so. We had nobler things to be proud of than the primary one of ancient, and I may venture to say illustrious, lineage: we could boast with truth that there was no bar sinister on the old escutcheon; [pg 755] our men had never known cowardice, nor our women shame; no maiden of our house had dishonored a father's white hairs, or wife brought a blot upon her husband's name. I was the last of our line so far, and the thought that it should die out under a cloud of shame with me was bitter with the bitterness of death to the admiral; for he was at heart as proud as a Plantagenet, with all his free and easy talk, and his jovial, jolly-tar manner to everybody, especially to his inferiors. Noblesse oblige was engraven on the inmost core of his honest heart; and he could not conceive a De Winton feeling less acutely on the point than he did himself. He had never been married; this partially accounted, perhaps, for his inability to merge the De Winton in the husband. It is possible that, if I had never been married, I should have comprehended his stern abstract view of the case, and have felt with him that the husband's misery was as nothing compared to the blow dealt at the pride of a De Winton. As it was, I could not feel this. I could have seen the whole clan of the De Wintons and their escutcheon in the bottom of the Red Sea, if I could have rescued myself from the anguish of renouncing for ever the young wife who had so cruelly charmed and blighted my life. I was driven to make this unworthy avowal on my uncle's suggesting that, assuming it were still possible for me to forgive her, she might lay it down as a condition of our reunion that she was to pursue her career on the stage. He merely threw out the idea as a wild notion that crossed his thoughts for a moment; but when I hinted at the possibility of yielding to this painful and humiliating condition rather than renounce Isabel for ever, he flew into such a frenzy of indignation that to calm him I believe I was cowardly enough to swallow my words, and declare that they had not been spoken in earnest. It was some time, however, before he subsided from the agitation they caused him. The idea of alluding, even in jest, to the possibility of a play-actress flaunting our name upon the boards of the theatre was too dreadful to be contemplated without unmitigated horror. If I let her go her mad career alone, the chances were that this disgrace would be spared us. Isabel had proved clearly enough so far that she desired secrecy to the full as much as we did; but if she continued on the stage as my wife, secrecy became impossible. She might play under the assumed name she now bore, but the true one would soon be blazoned abroad, do what we all might to conceal it. The managers who speculated on her voice would be quick to discover it, and make capital out of it. The admiral was so strong in his denunciation of the madness of the whole thing that he convinced me he was right. This little incident left him more than ever determined to keep me as much as possible in the background, and I so far acknowledged the wisdom of his views as to consent to let him go by himself to try and see Isabel in the morning.

It proved a fruitless mission. The concierge said that the signorina had not left her room yet; but the servant, in answer to my uncle's ring at her door, informed him that she had gone out for an early drive—it was not eight o'clock—and that she would not be in until dinner-hour. Would monsieur take the trouble to call later? Monsieur said he would, and he did; but he was then informed that the signorina had taken a chill in her drive, and had gone to bed. My uncle came home in great wrath; he believed no more in the chill than [pg 756] he had believed in the drive, and he was for writing there and then to Isabel, telling her so, and demanding an interview without more ado, using firm language and hinting at sterner measures if she refused. I entreated him not to do this. I don't know whether in the bottom of my heart I believed the servant's story, but I persuaded myself and then him that I did; that it was only natural that a tender, delicate-fibred creature like her should have been done up after the excitement of last evening; and that we had better leave her in peace for a day. He pooh-poohed this contemptuously: the excitement was just what she liked in the business; it was what play-actors, men and women, all alike lived on. He humored me, however, and consented to put off the letter till the next day. Meantime, something might turn up. I might meet her uncle myself, and button-hole the scoundrel on the spot. He must walk out some time or other, and I was determined to be on the watch. I paced up and down before the hotel for three weary hours, glancing up continually at the windows. I knew from my uncle what floor Isabel occupied. Once I fancied I caught sight of the fellow's face looking out for a moment, and then hurriedly withdrawn. Was it only fancy, or had he really seen me, and drawn back to escape my seeing him? I lounged into the coffee-room, and adroitly elicited from one of the waiters that the signorina was keeping very quiet, so as to avoid any disappointment for the forthcoming representation; she was to sing again in two nights, and no one was to be admitted to see her in the interval. Orders to this effect had been given to the concierge, who was to deny all visitors on the plea of the signorina's state of nervous debility, which made the slightest excitement off the stage fatal to her. When I repeated this to the admiral, he set his brown face in a scowl, and we very nearly quarrelled outright before he again yielded to my resistance, and agreed to wait two days more, and see whether she kept her engagement for the next performance. On the morning of the second day we both went out together to the baths. As we were passing through the Etablissement gardens, a young man came up to a group of people walking ahead of us, and gave some news that provoked sudden surprise, apparently of no pleasant nature; for we heard the words, “Abominable sell!” “What an extraordinary affair!” repeated with angry emphasis. We had not heard a word of what the young man had said, but the broken comments that reached us seemed, as if by some magnetic influence, to inform us of their meaning. The admiral, in his off-hand, sailor way, walked up to the party, and asked if any accident had happened on the coast. “Oh! no; no accident,” the bearer of the news said, “but a most disagreeable thing for everybody. Graziella has bolted, no one knows when or how; her rooms were found vacant an hour ago, and there was not a trace of her or the fellow who was with her. The Hôtel Royal was in a tremendous commotion about it; the landlord had been down to the station and to the quay, but there was no trace of them at either place. The landlord believed they had eloped during the night, by some highway or by-way, so as to avoid detection; but why or wherefore was the mystery. They had paid their bill. It was a horrible sell, for the little creature was the trump-card of the season—a second Malibran.”

I knew as well as if I had followed my uncle, and heard the intelligence [pg 757] with my own ears, what he had to tell me when he turned back, and came up to me, intending to break it gently. It seemed utterly useless after this to go to the hotel with the hope of gaining further particulars, but I urged at the same time that it was possible the landlord himself might be a party to the affair, and that, if he had been bought over to hold his tongue, he might be bought to loosen it. I could not count on the necessary command over myself to speak or to listen to others speaking of the event at this stage, so I yielded to my uncle's wish, and went home; he accompanied me to the door, for he judged by my looks that I was not fit to be left to go back alone. He then started off to the Rue Aguado. He found the place in an uproar about the flight, but no one could throw a particle of light on the time, the manner, or the motive of it. The concierge remembered seeing a lady, small and slight, and with a very elastic step, walk rapidly out of the house late on the previous evening, dressed in the deepest mourning, with a widow's crape veil, and holding her handkerchief to her eyes, as if crying bitterly; he had remarked her at the time, and thought she had been visiting some one in the hotel, and that she was in fresh mourning for her husband, poor thing! Everybody agreed that this must have been La Graziella in disguise. But beyond this not the smallest clew was found that could direct the pursuit of the fugitives. Their luggage had been carried off as mysteriously as themselves; no one had seen it removed. This induced the suspicion that they must have had an accomplice on the premises. The landlord, however, had a precedent to fall back on—a swindler who had lived at his expense for three weeks, and then decamped one fine morning, bag and baggage, having carried them all off himself, disguised as a porter, while several travellers were under way in the courtyard with their separate lots of luggage, and porters were hurrying in and out with them.

For two days after this event, which checkmated every movement on our part, we did nothing but wander about Dieppe, watching helplessly for some information that could have directed us what to do. My uncle was constantly down on the quay and at the railway station, questioning the sailors and the officials, and always coming back just as void of information as he went. He was more irascible than ever now about the honor of the De Wintons, and would not allow me to interfere directly or indirectly. I resented this tyranny; but the fact of my interference having already proved so disastrous gave him the whip-hand over me, and I felt it was wiser in my own interest to subside and let him act. He was actively seconded in his endeavors to track the fugitives by the manager of the theatre, who was resolved—so we heard on all sides—to spare neither trouble nor expense in recapturing his prize. The collapse of such a prima donna was a serious loss to him; he had gone to considerable expense in preparing for her début, and it had been so brilliant as to ensure the promise of an overflowing house to the end of the season. On one side my uncle was gratified at the intelligence and energy displayed by the manager; but on the other hand it put him in a ferment of terror. What if, in his search after Graziella, he should discover who she was and what name she bore! The bare thought of this almost drove him frantic. The manager's opinion, it would seem, was that she had escaped in a [pg 758] fishing-smack. This was the most likely mode of flight for any one, indeed, to adopt from a seaport town like Dieppe; no preliminaries were required in the way of tickets or passports, and the fugitives might steer themselves to any coast they pleased, and land unobserved where it suited them. It was useless, however, for us to leave Dieppe until we heard something. While the manager was vigorously prosecuting the search on his side, my uncle was busy on ours. He suggested that it would be well to make an exploring expedition amongst the hamlets on the cliffs-groups of huts scattered at short intervals over the long range of the falaises overhanging the sea, and inhabited by a scanty and miserable population.

We had felt it necessary to take a few safe agents of the police into our confidence; and before setting to work among the gens de falaise, as they are called by the dwellers on the plain, we consulted them as to the best mode of proceeding, and asked some information as to the sort of people we had to deal with. The police advised us to leave the attempt alone. They said the “folk of the cliffs” were so simple that their name was a by-word for stupidity down below. It required little short of a surgical operation to convey a new idea of the simplest kind into their brain. There was a story current in the town of how, not so very long ago, a gang of robbers prowled about the neighborhood, and made it expedient for the mayor to issue a proclamation, wherein it was notified that nobody would be allowed to enter the gates after night-fall without a lantern. The notice was placarded all over the walls, and this is how it worked with the gens de falaise: Ding-dong came a ring at the gate one evening, and the sentry called out: “Qui vive?”

“Gens de falaise!” (Pronounced fawlaise.)

“Have you a lantern?”

“Eh, oui!”

“Is there a candle in it?”

“Eh, non! We were not told to!”

“Well, now you're told to; be off and get one!”

Next evening ding-dong come the travellers again. “Qui vive?”

“Gens de falaise!”

“Have you a lantern?”

“Eh, oui!”

“And a candle in it?”

“Eh, oui?”

“Is it lighted?”

“Eh, non! We were not told to.”

“Well, now you're told to; go back and light it.”

Away went the gens de falaise again, and finally returned a third time to the charge with a lantern and a candle in it, and lighted.

This was not very encouraging to persons who wanted to question intelligent observers. We tried it, however, but soon found that rumor had not maligned the simple dwellers on the cliffs, and that nothing was to be gleaned from their dull, unobservant eyes.

Four days passed, and still we were in the same dense darkness. The suspense and inaction became unendurable to me.

“Uncle,” I said, “I can stand this no longer. I will run up to Paris, and set the lynx-eyes of the police there on the lookout for us. Perhaps it will be of no use; but anything is better than waiting here doing nothing.”

My uncle fell in with the idea at once. I set off to Paris, and left him at Dieppe, where, in truth, it seemed more likely that information of some sort must transpire sooner or later.

To Be Continued.

[pg 759]