At Midnight, and other stories

Chapter I Out Of The Past

They sat in their American buggy at the turn of an English road — an Australian bride and bridegroom, on their wedding tour. It was a bit of the "old country" that had not been syndicated and modernized since the bride groom had seen it last — when he was a young fellow at Cambridge, paying visits to the houses of his university chums because his own home was inaccessible. Tall hedges embraced the ripening wheat-fields still ; brambly ditches yawned beneath them. There were dense woods hereabouts that made green tunnels of the road, and there were thickets of fern and wild vines and bushes — acres of unprofitable beauty — under the useless trees. The spot was a joy to the sentimental wayfarer, and Mrs. Wingate's gaze meant rapture not expressible in words. " This," she sighed, " is England, Billy."

She meant that this was the England of her romantic dreams — England as described to her by exiled parents and in scores of delightful books. " And this," said Billy, " is the place I told you of." He pointed with his whip. Just below and before them rose an ancient gate way, iron and stone, with much heraldic ornament. An ivy-mantled lodge with curly chimney-stacks stood immediately within ; and beyond, sloping gently upward for a mile or more, a straight, grassed drive between thick woods — a beautiful green vista, three times as wide as an ordinary park avenue — was closed, on an elevated horizon, by the indistinct but imposing mass of a great grey house, one of those " stately homes of England " which are our pride and boast. It was a lovely picture, and a lovely atmosphere through which to view it — tinted with the hues of approaching sunset on a late summer day.

A few head of deer were browsing quietly on the shadow-patterned sward ; thrushes were calling to each other from wood to wood ; partridges flying homeward to their nests in the corn, disturbed by the sound of the horses' hoofs. " There it is," said the bridegroom, his eyes kind ling, his voice full of feeling, evoked by thronging memories of the splendid days of youth. " And you should see it when the pink may is out and those woods full of rhododendron in flower ! Look at that grass ride — the deer like to come out there to feed, though they hide in the fern to rest — and what a stretch for a gallop ! There wasn't the shooting in my time that there is now, but many a jolly day have I had with Walter Desailly in those fields over there, walking up our birds with one old dog through the turnips and stubble.

You see that water shining through the trees? There was duck there ; we shot them with a rook rifle by moonlight out of a bedroom window, and scared the maids with the row we made ; once we caught a forty two pound pike on a night-line ; Walter had been fishing for it all his life, and found three sets of his tackle rusted in its jaws. The old squire had it stuffed for a curiosity. I wonder if Walter has it still, and whether he ever thinks of those old days ? " The speaker sighed inaudibly. He was a fine man, in his prime, inclining to stoutness, and with a suspicion of frost upon his short brown beard. " Those old days " were nearly twenty years ago. " You ought to call upon him," said Mrs. Win gate, "and remind him of them. I'm sure he would be delighted, if you were such friends as that.

Then you could show me over. Probably he would invite us to stay with him. At any rate, he might be able to advise us about a place for ourselves." This pair, it must be explained, were wealthy, as was the case with many Australians at that date — a period now indicated in the conversation of their countrymen as " the good times " — he a lucky Queensland pastoralist, she an heiress of the Silver Boom, both rather new to prosperity of this kind, but too naturally nice to be vulgarized by it. Neither had any of the gross ambitions common to persons in their case, but both desired keenly to enjoy their money. They had just concluded a most successful London season, without having been presented at Court or made notorious in society papers ; and they were now touring the country behind their own horses, mainly for rest and independence, and to see what was to be seen, but also in search of a good house in a sporting neighbourhood, where they might make a home and entertain their friends during the shooting and hunting seasons.

Mrs. Wingate's dream of luxury was to live in a mediæval castle, with history around her in the atmosphere of refined, aristocratic, old-England life, as she had romantically imagined it. Mr. Wingate craved for gun and rod and a straight run after a stout fox — the joys of his early manhood, which memory had idealized — but was mainly bent at present upon pleasing his wife. They gazed together at the most attractive " place " they had yet seen, with thoughts of proprietorship that they felt were absurd and vain. Windsor Castle seemed as likely to be to let as the old mansion of the Desaillys, which had not wanted a master of the name for at least four hundred years. " Why don't you call on him ? " urged the bride. " To have been college friends surely is introduction enough ? " " We parted on bad terms," replied Wingate, with an air of reserve.

" What does that matter, after all these hundreds of years ? You are not Corsican vendetta people. English gentlemen quarrel and have done with it ; they don't bear malice for a lifetime. I am sure he has forgotten the whole thing long ago. Unless," she added, with a glance at her husband's face, " unless it was something very desperate indeed. Was it ? Oh, I believe it was ! A woman, of course. If you don't want to tell me, Billy, you need not." Billy's left arm curled round the bride's slim waist. " You are such a dear, kind little soul, Nettie, that I really don't mind telling you," he said, after a pause. " You'll believe me, I know, when I declare on my honour that it wasn't my fault. And, besides, it was before your time, sweetheart ; almost before you were born, indeed." " Yes, Billy ; I know I am not the first, by thou sands !

" " Oh, not quite so many as that ! Just — well, never mind — there's only you now, pet — only you for evermore." He kissed her at this point, for it was a lonely bit of road where they had stopped to look at the view and breathe the horses. And she re turned his caress with a laugh, much comforted by the reflection that the particular lady referred to, if still alive, would be forty by this time, if not more. " She was the daughter of a Cambridge bookseller," confessed Billy. " It don't sound much, but a truer lady never stepped. We called her ' the Princess,' because she treated us all with such crush ing dignity. Lots of us were gone on her : really, I think, just because of that ; but Walter Desailly cut me out. At any rate, he said something that made me stop going there, so that I mightn't seem to be interfering with him.

Of course I imagined it was just a little affair, like others, and never thought he would dream of marrying her, because the Desaillys are such great folks and so proud of their pedigree. But he did. I suppose she is living there now in state as my lady, and forgets that she ever waited in her father's shop. But, no — she wouldn't ; she hadn't an ounce of that sort of snob bishness in her." " Go on," said Mrs. Wingate, breaking a medita tive pause. " There is no motive for quarrel, so far. I hope I am not strait-laced, Billy dear, and you couldn't make me jealous if you tried ; but I do hope you did not elope with her afterwards." " I did nothing, Nettie, that you would not have approved of, had you been there and known all the circumstances. Walter did not know all the cir cumstances, and a man won't believe the word of his best friend in these cases, if appearances are against him.

Come to that, I don't blame him. I wouldn't myself. It was a chapter of accidents all through. In the first place, I never thought of Lexie Baird again after I left Cambridge. I came home " " And got engaged to that fat woman who is now Mrs. Ross." " She was not a fat woman then. Let us keep to the point, if you please. But perhaps you don't care to hear about it ? " " Oh, I do — I do ! I never was more interested in anything. And I think it is so good and dear of you, Billy, not to mind telling me." She slipped her hand within his elbow, and laid her fair young cheek upon his very large coat sleeve. She really was a sweet little bride, incapable of a mean thought about her husband, as he well knew. " I came home, and took to business, and did not return to England for a couple of years and more.

I went then because— no, not because of any woman, fat or thin, as I see you would insinuate — though it was not nice to live in a place where a fascinating widow was employing lawyers to write her letters to you. At any rate — well, look here, Nettie ; young men will be young men, just as boys will be boys — they can't help it ; and you needn't rake up old follies now that I've grown wise. Yes, I'm wise now. You are a witness to it. All those blunders were teaching me your value, don't you see ? Per haps I had better not tell you any more. It was stupid to mention the subject." She apologized so prettily for having dared to laugh, and urged him with such obvious sincerity not to tell her any more if he would rather not, that he proceeded with his little tale immediately. " I went to shoot at a place not far from here, and a girl in the house told me that young Desailly had married a low barmaid, and been cut by his family for it.

I was quite staggered by the news, because he'd been a fastidious sort of fellow, and I wanted to find him and cheer him up a bit ; but no one knew where he was. The girl, Miss Balcombe — her father was the rector here — she was awfully bitter. It seems Walter had wanted to marry her at one time, and his people wouldn't have it She was no end of a pretty girl, but there was something about her — she reminded me of a silky cat ; and the way she talked of poor Lexie — I didn't know it Was Lexie then — was fiendish. A low barmaid, indeed ! No wonder I hadn't a notion what was coming. By the way, she honoured me with a particular regard. It's not for me to say it, but if I'd liked — however, I didn't." " Sure ? " Mrs. Wingate questioned cautiously. " Quite sure. She gave me the creeps sometimes when she used to smile.

It was a perfectly heavenly smile, if you can understand, but she just put it on and off like a mask, and it was always the same for all purposes. She'd look really like an angel with that smile on, and her fair hair, and complexion like a lily ; and all the time you'd have a cold feeling that she was thinking she'd like to strangle you. At At Midnight least, that's how I felt when I was trying not to make love to her — I mean to resist her inducements to— I mean — but you know what I mean." " Perfectly, Billy dear." " Oh, she was a little devil, that girl ! I know she was, though she was a parson's daughter. To look at her father, a real old-style rector, fat and red, fond of good living and not too fond of work — the commonplace personified — you'd really feel doubts as to whether he could be her father.

Same with her mother, a meek little goose of a woman, who just fell down before her child and worshipped her. But a dear little soul for all that. We got on capitally together. She invited me to visit them at that old rectory over there " — pointing with his whip to a church tower in the landscape — " and I got a sprained wrist from a hunting fall first time I went out that season, and she nursed me as if I were a son of her own. What are you smiling at, Nettie ? " " Nothing, dearest. I didn't know I smiled." " And it was while I was there that everything happened. The very day I arrived they told me that Walter had been forgiven and taken back, because his wife — that low barmaid, you know ! — had had a son, and somebody had reported that it was a fine child, and the old squire, being naturally anxious about the succession, thought it time to set things straight.

Nobody had seen them yet, but there was to be a small dinner party that night to meet them, and I had been invited. Well, you can imagine my feelings when I stood with the others round the fire in the hall — I wish you could have a sight of that hall, Nettie ! — to see, coming down the stairs by Walter's side, our princess — and looking it too, by George ! — instead of the vulgar creature I had been expecting. I never was so struck all of a heap in my life. As for Geraldine Balcombe, oh, it was rich to see her smiling when Mrs. Walter Desailly was intro duced to her ! I had walked there with her — up that very grass ride you see before you, which is a good deal longer than it looks — and all the way she had been dancing on her toes, as it were, full of the triumph she was going to have over them all, and especially over the wife Walter had taken instead of her ; she couldn't keep her elation within decent bounds.

Dress ! — I believe you. A regular ball gown of white satin, the best she'd got, and pearls round her neck — a lovely neck it was, too — and flowers out of the greenhouse. She'd got herself up regardless, thinking how mad Walter would be when he compared her with the low person, and how old Sir Thomas and my lady would curse the stratagems they had used so successfully to keep her out of the family. She quite thought she was going to have a rich revenge on the lot of them that night. And there was Lexie, looking like a real princess, in her plain black gown, with hardly any neck showing, putting everybody in the shade. Oh, she was a beautiful woman, Nettie ! There was no mistake about it. Even Geraldine, though her vanity was like a rhinoceros' hide, felt it directly she saw her ; and I know she hated poor Lexie like poison from that moment.

There was no love lost on the other side either. When Lexie heard her calling ' Walter' here and 'Walter' there, like a cooing dove, I under stood the look in her eyes. She was quick enough to smell a rat, and she wasn't the sort of woman to be trifled with. I can tell you she walked into that house all on sire with the humiliations they had made her suffer before they knew her, and if she didn't make them eat humble pie, from the great Sir Thomas downwards, I'm a Dutchman. Do you think she'd have her child sent for to be introduced and inspected ? Not a bit of it. Everybody was dying to see the heir, for whose sake she had been condoned and acknowledged, and she calmly refused to have him disturbed out of his regular habits. Sir Thomas himself said, with his queer smile — he and she became very good friends afterwards — that he supposed they'd have to go on their knees at the nursery door before she'd deign to show it.

Oh, she was a match for Miss Geraldine — except that she was all open and above board, and Geraldine was so secret and treacherous. I know that girl began to make mischief between husband and wife — and me — before we'd been an hour together. Of course Lexie was very pleased to see me." Why ? is you don't mind my asking, Billy." " Well, you see I was an old friend, and I was not so grand as the Desaillys. Though she was not a bit afraid of them, their stately ways oppressed her. Besides, she was angry with them for the way they had repudiated her, and too proud to submit to be suddenly patronized and tolerated, and to make her self cheap to them all at once. Moreover, Walter behaved like an idiot. Instead of keeping near her, to pilot her about and help her to understand the strange ways, he sat the whole blessed evening in Geraldine Balcombe's pocket.

Her doing, of course, but that didn't excuse him. He was her husband, and he ought to have backed her up. I know she felt it. In fact, I could see plainly that they were not as happy together as they should have been. Walter would have liked to talk to me about that — he did tell me he'd had a devil of a time keeping house on a bachelor's allowance — but I always shut him up straight. He was a selfish fellow, Walter Desailly. She was infinitely too good for him." He paused, gazing at the grey pile on the horizon, unconscious of the creeping twilight that had be°nn to blot it out. His wife heaved a pensive little sigh. He did not hear it. " They asked me to The Chase to stay. By decrees the house filled, for Sir Thomas tried to make up to her for past slights and to bring the county families to receive and respect her.

Men came to shoot, and there were parties given. Somehow Geraldine was always there, and she was always with Walter. The fellow must have been mad, or else the little cat had some power of witchcraft in her. To neglect a woman like Lexie, and she his wife, for such an unwholesome, cold-blooded however, she wasn't cold-blooded to him. I do think she loved him as far as she could love anybody. I know she turned against me as soon as ever he came home — regularly hated me, in fact — partly, I suppose, because I sided with Lexie, whom she hated more. Why, the very last time I ever saw her, when I went to say good bye, she was deliberately burning a fichu thing of Venetian lace just because I had given it to her — a valuable piece, mind you, of a rare pattern, that I had been stupid enough to pay a lot of money for ; stuffing it into the fire, she was, and ramming it down with the poker, as if it was so much dishcloth."

" An extraordinary way to show spite ! " Mrs. Wingate ejaculated. " And she did not scorn your offering in the first instance ? " " It wasn't my offering. She almost wheedled it out of me — admired it so much that for very shame I had to give it to her. It wasn't meant for her at all." " That makes it still more extraordinary. If it had been Mrs. Walter's lace, I could understand it. For whom did you mean it, dear ? " " I don't know. Not for her, at any rate. But she got it, and seemed to think no end of it too — ■ always wore it when she wanted to be extra smart. That very night she had had it on, over a blue silk dress. In a paroxysm of rage she just tore it off her shoulders and destroyed it. I asked her why, and she said because she did not want anything that reminded her of me. When I asked her why again, she said something implying that I had paid her attentions and then thrown her over.

Which was a lie. But I was so upset myself that I didn't care what she said or what she thought. I left The Chase that night and went to the Himalayas, and I don't know where — the farthest off that I could get. And I never heard a word of the Desaillys from that day to this. Oh, yes, I heard that Sir Thomas was dead — that's all." " But you haven't told me what happened, Billy?" " Oh, nothing much happened. I stayed a little while the first time — not long ; you can't stay in a house when you see your host growing cool to you — getting utterly unfounded suspicions of you into his head. I went on to other places, and wandered about a bit ; looked up her people at Cambridge, to tell them about her and how she was settling down. They were a nice family, none the worse for being tradespeople — three jolly young sisters who were so proud of her rise in life ; and when they asked me to stay a few days with them, I did of course.

She didn't know I was there, but one c At Midnight day — it was winter time, and I'd just come in from my old college chapel with two of the girls — we found her in the sitting-room, crying in her mother's lap as if her heart would break. She had come home because she could not bear it — Geraldine, you know — and said she was going to stay awhile and have a rest ; but they were so awfully afraid she would make a breach with her husband and offend the Desaillys that they implored her not to. I went out of the room to leave them together, but presently they called me back, and she was quite recovered and calm. She made some excuse for her sudden visit, and said she must return before night— it was nearly night already — and would I look up the trains for her. She had the child with her, and, of course, she had remembered about his being the heir and belonging to The Chase in spite of her ; and she was keener now than anybody to retrieve her false step.

For it was a false step, and she, who was always so sensible and courageous, must have been fearfully treated to make her take it. I never knew what they did to her. They, I say. But Walter was a gentleman when not bewitched by that fiend of a girl. " Well, I took her home. I had to, because the only man in her family was ill, and she couldn't be allowed to knock about railway stations alone at that hour. Besides, she was so perfectly innocent and unconscious of wrong that she asked me to escort her. We had the child with us, and we hardly spoke the whole way ; she was full of her thoughts, so was I, neither of us could mention what they were, though we were such old friends. I wished with all my soul that I could leave her outside her gates, but I dared not suggest it; I had to go on right to the house, or put ideas into her head that she was above dreaming of.

And Walter received us, and you can imagine how much he believed of the explanation we had to give ; he just turned on his heel and walked away, leaving us standing together in the great hall. And I saw Geraldine Balcombe up in the gallery, looking down and smiling. " Of course Lexie knew then. She was as white as a sheet. Poor girl ! Poor girl ! But I never saw such bravery in a woman, and she was more like a princess than ever. I had already arranged to sleep at the inn in the village — the Desailly Arms, where we will put up now, if it is still in existence — taking on the fly we had got at the station ; and she just quietly bade me good-night, and thanked me for taking such good care of her ; and I left her — left her alone to bear it all. " However, I went to The Chase next day. I could not rest, and I determined to have it out with Walter.

So I did, and so lost control of myself that I did her more harm than good, but she forgave me that. Look here, Nettie, I will make a clean breast of it — it is over and done with these twenty years, so you needn't be jealous — but I was hard hit. I was damned hard hit." "And told her?" " Good heavens, no ! I'd have cut my throat sooner. But seeing her in all that trouble — burning to help her, and not able to — I think she got a notion, just at the last. She encouraged me to travel. She was so kind, never reproaching me, but I knew what she meant. She wished me to go away, and never come back. And I did — for twenty years, at any rate. This is the first time — what ? Oh, you precious little noodle ! You don't mean to tell me you are jealous, after all ? Now, Nettie, I'll let you into another dead secret : for fifteen, at least, out of those twenty years I haven't cared a single, solitary straw about her, not even enough to inquire of anybody whether she was alive or dead.

And surely to goodness you don't suppose I am going to do it now ? " " You are a faithless wretch," Mrs. Wingate ejaculated, wetting his cheek with the tip of an eyelash. " I suppose fifteen other women — oh, I begin to see what I have done in marrying a handsome husband ! But one thing I insist on, Billy — I will see Lady Desailly with my own eyes before we leave this place, and so shall you. Call up that man who is going along the road, and ask him if the family is at home."

Chapter II Mystery

William Wingate had a seeling that he would rather inquire about his old sweetheart elsewhere than at the buggy side on the public highway. And so, finding his wife firm in demanding the immediate satisfaction of her curiosity, and that he should be confronted at the earliest opportunity with a woman old enough to be her mother — another Mrs. Ross with an immeasurable waist — he said he would seek information at the lodge, where he might find some one who remembered him. She approved, and took the reins. He jumped down, and the ivied cottage with the Tudor chimneys swallowed him. It was all but dark when he reappeared, and yet she saw at once that he had had a shock. " Ah," she cried sympathetically, " your Lexie is dead ! " " Worse," he groaned, as he swung himself into the buggy. " Unutterably worse !

But I don't believe it. It's incredible. Nettie, what do you think they say ? — that she eloped years ago with a foreigner who was staying in the house ; that she left the child, who is now a young man, and that At Midnight she took one of the most valuable of the family jewels with her— a diamond necklace, with five star rubies in it. I remember it well. The old man, when he was reconciled to her, and wishing everybody to look up to her as if she had been born to the position, gave it to her and asked her to wear it ; she had it on the very last time I ever saw her. This fellow — he is only a young keeper, speaking from hearsay and gossip — says Walter would not have her followed— scorned to interfere with her, both because he was too proud and because her lover had been his friend — and let the necklace go with her, and that nothing has been heard of either of them since.

As if Lexie, of all people, would carry off property 1 I laughed at the idea. I told the fellow I didn't believe a word of such a story. I don't. I'll lay my life there's been a mistake some where." " She was an impulsive woman," Mrs. Wingate remarked thoughtfully. " See how she rushed home in a fit of impatience, and repented the next moment and rushed back again. And perhaps they drove her to extremities." "It is conceivable," he returned, " she might have done a mad thing in sheer desperation, though I should have thought she'd have sooner killed herself. They say that she and the man were seen going off together — though, if it was in the night, it may easily have been a case of mistaken identity. But supposing At Midnight she left the child — she would have to do that if she wanted to get free herself, for the heir they must have recovered — which is sufficiently incredible, seeing what a devoted mother she was, she would certainly never have taken a scrap of Desailly property with her.