At the Eleventh Hour: a novel, etc

Front matter

AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR KEITH FLEMING GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Limited Routledge's Railway Library Advertiser. [Issue. Ninth] KEATINGS POWDER BUGS, If || | c PLEAS, RILLO MOTHS, BEETLES. The PUBLIC are CAUTIONED that packages of the genuine powder bear the autograph of THOMAS KEATING. Sold in Tins, 6d. and Is. each everywhere. Ninth] Routledge's Railway Library Advertiser. [Issue. "WH.0 ARE THE HAPPY, WHO ARE THE FREE? YOU TELL ME, AND I'LL TELL THEE. Those who have tongues that never lie, Truth on the lip, truth In the eye ; To Friend or to Foe, To all above and to all below. THESE ARE THE HAPPY, THESE ARE THE FREE, SO MAY IT BE WITH THEE AND ME. ' What higher aim can man attain than conquest over human pain ? DRAWING AN OVERDRAFT ON THE BANK OF LIFE. Late Hours, Fagged, Unnatural Excitement, Breathing Impure Air, too Rich Food, Alco holic Drink, Gouty, Rheumatic, and other Blood-Poisons, Fevers, Feverisi Colds, Sleep lessness.

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Chapter I. Too Late

A dreary, miserable November night, or rather earliest morning, as the first hour after midnight has just rung out from many brazen throats upon the dank, sodden air. It is raining in torrents, and Paris, even Paris, whose very name insensibly conjures up visions of brilliancy and airy lightness, is shrouded in a mantle of greyest gloom, heavy, depressing gloom. It seems as if the gay city had taken an enlivening trip across the Channel, and returned in the disguise of a British fog, so thick and murky is the atmosphere. In terse phrase, it is true November weather, that is, according to our insular traditions, though one B might hope for other experience in the French capital. And the gloom, and drear, hopeless misery of the night, seem to have entered the heart or at least rested on the face of a man who is splashing heavily along through the soaked streets, in the immediate neighbourhood of the terminus ofthe South.

When the few passengers, who had rushed through those hours of dripping darkness, alighted at that chill, unwelcoming moment, they found fewer fiacres awaiting them : the truth is, the race of French cabbies have not served the apprentice ship to heart-breaking, deplorable weather, which our stolid, seasoned " Jehus " have, and conse quently resent its darker moods ; and so the drivers and owners of the voitures stayed shivering at home, as well as all the rest of the world that could ; and the surplus passengers, who were not happy enough to be in time to fling themselves headlong into the two or three carriages that stood in melancholy, drenched wretchedness (generally depositing themselves on the coachman, who was forgetting his sorrows in sleep under cover of his own cab), had to trudge it.

But the particular pedestrian we have elected so follow on this miserable November nicrht, heeds mot the rain, or the chill, creeping fog — cares not whether he walks or drives — is scarcely conscious of aught around him, but tramps on drearily, per sistently, rather slackening than hastening as he. goes, with despair at his heart and on his brooding face. Some thirty hours before he had started for the Riviera ; he reached L (where he was to remain for a day or two before continuing south) at four in the morning, weariedly found his hotel, and went straight to bed ; at eleven o'clock he was roused from placid slumber by the landlord him self, who, with many and profuse apologies, was the bearer of a telegram for Monsieur ; it came last night before Monsieur himself arrived ; but, alas ! through the betise, the deplorable carelessness of an infamous garcon, it had been forgotten, mislaid, and only this moment had been discovered ; would Monsieur pardon, excuse, would he have the complaisance to overlook such a misfortune ?

Monsieur, sleepily and unemotionally, took the ominous, greenish-blue paper from the hands of the verbose landlord, and proceeded slowly an .1 uninterestedly to open it. Something connected with the business that was taking him South, of course. Monsieur le Marquis had changed his somewhat capricious mind about some direction already given with regard to that wonderful Riviera chateau that was to be, and at the last moment flashed him his new whim, his fresh suggestion, thus And then, the paper lay open in his hands, and he sprang from his bed with a curse, as his face grew ashen white with indignant rage, while a cold, horrible fear p z crept round his heart. Who had sent him that warning- ? the ostensible name of the sender of the telegram was unknown to him ; if it was all a baseless lie, would anyone have the fiendish malice to carry it to such a pitch as this ?

Notes he had had, anonymous, one or two, telling him to beware — to watch — to guard his honour while he could ; but a telegram was a different matter. He stormed, he swore in vigorous Saxon (and was consequently utterly unintelligible to his host) at the delay in receiving the direful message ; he dressed, and breakfastless tore to the station, to find the fast train to Paris just gone. Was there ever such diabolical fate ? He would have to wait hours, many hours for another — wait inactive, with fierce anger, wild grief, and agonised, torturing suspense raging and contending in his breast. By-and-bye he was tearing back over the ground he had travelled so tranquilly the night before, frantically chafing at each moment's delay. At last he reached that gloomy station which he has just left, and would have been amongst the first to take bodily possession of a fiacre by sheer strength of will and body, but a note was thrust into his hand.

He tore it open, glanced hastily at it by the dim, flickering light of the platform lamps, and then — staggered back half fainting against the wall. He was too late ! too late to save his honour ; too late to save what was dearer than honour, or life, or name ; too late to save that good old name from being smirched, being trailed and dragged in the dust ; and — by her ! the woman he had idolised, the woman he had believed in as he did in his God, and this was the end ; his home was deserted, he was dishonoured, and a despairing, broken-hearted man. Thus he reflected, after reading those cruel lines, that cowardly, anonymous note, which stabbed the man to the soul, and then left him to writhe in bitter, helpless pain. For a few moments he was half stupified, partly stunned by misery ; but then he roused himself.

How did he know that the venomous thing was true ? He had had a couple of these poisoned barbs within the last month — those nameless notes that are craven's blows that strike you in the dark, and you know not from whom they come — but he had heeded them not. He had looked in his Helen's eyes, fresh from reading those slanderous hints and innuendos, and seen there — love and truth, and faithfulness unto death. And now — why should he believe ? And yet — that telegram that summoned him so urgently ! He stumbled out of the station like a man blindfold, mechanically repeating over and over to himself the brief, terrible sentences of that cruel note, as if the words had lost their meaning for his stricken ears, as if he sought dazedly to unravel some hidden mystery, and repeated a bidden formula automatically : — " Too late !

The bird has flown. Your hearth is desolate. Madame Dacre, the adorable, the facile Helen, eloped with the Marquis de Vallanelle while your farewell kisses were still warm upon her lips. You trusted ' all in all,' and thus your trust is rewarded." On and on he tramps, through the deserted, drowned streets, his pace ever slackening as he nears his home, or rather, the house in which he has lived during the one short month he has been in Paris. It, or no place on this earth, will ever be really " home " to him again, if what he has read under those dim platform lamps to-night be true. The Marquis ! His patron — his employer — his only friend in all that brilliant city. And this, then, was the reason of his condescending friendship, his apparent simple kindliness, which had been accepted in perfect good faith, partly as a natural tribute to his wife's rare beauty and charm (a tribute paid, as he supposed, in all honour), partly to that fact of their being aliens, and quite unknown.

The Marquis had brought him — Lionel Hartley Dacre, the clever, skilful architect, whose great talent was just beginning to be acknowledged — to France, to design for him an ideal chateau on the Riviera ; also to devise certain improvements and decorations for his stately old mansion in the Faubourg St. Germain ; besides suggestions for alterations he wished effected in his beautiful country-house, a few miles out of Paris. He (Lionel) had been so fortunate, as he then thought it, to meet the Marquis de Vallanelle at a public fete in London, at which he and his wife were present, and where he was something of a personage, having just achieved the success which he hoped was a foretaste of the fame that would be his by-and-bye. An English patron, who esteemed his talent highly, introduced him to the French nobleman, hoping to obtain for him this very com mission.

The Marquis was wonderfully affable, he spoke English perfectly, and chatted in pleasantly familiar fashion, with the architect and his wife, and then made an appointme'nt to talk business for the morrow. That interview was eminently satis factory. Mr. Dacre should make his own terms ; the one thing stipulated for by the Marquis was, that he should come to France as soon as possible ; he wished to have the work entered upon at once, and, from what his friend Lord had said of Mr. Dacre's talents, he had determined that no one else should design that chateau of which he had dreamed for the last twelve months, and that was to be a marvel of airy elegance, a home of delight. Lionel Dacre felt duly impressed and flattered, and said he would make arrangements for leaving England at once. In another week the Marquis was returning, and he would follow in a few days.

Of course Madame Dacre would accompany him : his stay was uncertain, might be indefinitely prolonged ; besides, it would be a charming opportunity for her to visit Paris. So spoke the Marquis, with kindly consideration. And so Lionel and his lovely Helen, — lovelier even after her ten years of matronhood, than the girl of twenty who stood with him at the altar in the bloom of her brilliant youth, and had been the sunshine of his life ever since, sunshine un chequered by even a passing shade, — and their little son, found themselves very delightfully settled in a luxurious appartcment in the " Chaussee d'Antin ; " much too ambitious a residence for their still simple ideas ; they would have preferred to live in a less pretentious quarter ; but the Marquis took the rooms, hired the servants, and insisted on bearing all expense, in short they must consider themselves his guests though under another roof, as long as they remained in Paris.

How wonderfully kind and affable he was, they thought, and how scrupu lously courteous and polite, quite as much so as if they were his equals in rank, and these old Faubourg aristocracy were so apt to be haughtily exclusive. With what chivalrous respect and deference he uniformly treated Mrs. Dacre, and how considerately thoughtful and attentive he was ; almost daily sending a carriage of his own to take her and her little boy an airing, because they demurred at his supplying them with one for their own especial use ; sometimes even himself driving with the architect and his wife in the Bois, where ladies of the highest and most exclusive rank and fashion wondered as they bowed — per haps a trifle frigidly — who was the lovely woman with the fair English face, who reclined with such easy grace in the Marquis de Vallanelle's carriage.

She was a stranger ; she was not of their set ; and they would have shaken their heads and whispered scandal, but for the presence of the stalwart Englishman at her side ; even as it was, that protecting presence scarcely quite shielded her : there were some who glanced askance at that sweet face, with suspicious looks and suggestive shrugs. But Lionel Dacre and Helen his wife, knew nothing, heard nothing, of Paris gossip. They did not know that the Marquis de Vallanelle was notorious as a profligate. They did not guess, when looking at his frank, almost boyish face — he was scarcely thirty, and looked younger than his years — that the fact of a woman being seen much in his society, was sufficient to cast a slur on her reputation ; that his dearest delight in life was to damage the fair fame of any pure, trustingcreature who was thrown in his way.

Rotten to the heart's core, was Louis, tenth Marquis de Vallanelle ; and the beauteous, un suspicious Helen Dacre, whom he had marked for his latest victim, felt pleased and flattered at his courteous notice ; congratulating herself with flut tering pride on the good fortune that had given to her darling Lionel so influential and kindly a patron. How completely at her ease she felt, with this friendly, handsome, young French nobleman ; and how distressingly the reverse with the pompous, laconic, elderly Lord on the one or two occasions of her meeting the English aristocrat. And to the young man of the gracious, simple, familiar manners — though not intrusively so — the lovely unconscious creature — innocent and confiding in spite of her thirty years, — shewed, unintentionally, the pretty enchanting tricks of face, and voice, and gesture, that always took fright and vanished when in the presence of strangers, — that were only seen to the best advantage by those who had the privilege of watching her in her home, in sweet familiar inter course with those she loved.

For this woman, in her single-hearted simplicity and loyal faithfulness, unlike many of her sisters, appeared at her very winsomest when with the dear ones that formed her world ; she wanted no audience to admire, to applaud, when she smiled her sweetest smile and glanced most radiant glances ; she was bright and playful and witching when happy in the still seclu sion of her home, with her beloved husband and her idolised child, and knew not her own wondrous powers of fascination, powers quite apart from her beauty that was indisputable. All these subtle, indescribable charms, blossomed forth in unre strained, unconscious perfection, before the eyes of Louis, Marquis de Vallanelle, who exercised an influence not unlike that of the fabled upas-tree, blighting where his shadow fell. He seemed so friendly and natural and unaffected, and so young — much younger than herself, she imagined, — that Helen Dacre lost all sense of strangeness and formality in his presence, and was her own sweet, arch, captivating self, smiling in the young man's face with serene security, little guessing, never dreaming that he would extinguish for ever the light of her happiness, the happiness that had been so true, so perfect.

That her whole life to come would be deformed and hideous, torturingly seared and twisted by those few weeks' acquaintance with this gentle spoken French nobleman. And so, during that short month in Paris, Helen has been on the very verge of a preci pice, though she saw it not ; a precipice, over which she must inevitably go. Though she imagined it not, she was bidding an eternal farewell to the dear old life, the life that seemed a very part of herself, from which she could never be dissevered, save by death, but which was fast slipping from her loving clasp. Her Lionel, by whose side she looked forward to spend a long, and happy, and honoured life, God in His great mercy, she often thought and prayed, would let them both live to be very very old ; they loved each other so intensely, He would have pity, and not separate them till the last possible moment.

And she thought not that soon, horribly soon, the time would come, that would see them parted as effectually as if the grave yawned already between them. Her Lionel. Her husband ; her beloved, from whom she had never been separated but once or twice for a brief period since her marriage,to drift asunder in a fiercely short week or two ; never again in all the cruel, distant, despairing years, to meet, to kiss, to speak, to look into each other's eyes — until

Chapter II. In The Silence

On and on, through the dreary dripping night, splashes the lonely wayfarer. How inexpressibly dismal and depressing are the silent sodden streets, so empty, so deserted, so still ; how insidiously creeping and penetrating the thick yellow fog. The man shudders involuntarily, but whether from physical wretchedness or mental misery (the misery of a crushing terrible despair coupled with a sickening agonised suspense, a vague shadowy hope that is more horrible than downright tortur ing certainty), none can tell. And now — he turns into the street, grown already familiar in those few weeks. He reaches the house that but a few hours ago he left with joy and pride and calm trustful love reigning in his breast, the house that had held for him all he cared for on earth. And now! — He glances fearfully at the windows — the windows of his appartement that look upon the street — all is darkness, profound, inscrutable.

How will he have courage to enter and know his fate ? And the strong man, weak in the moment of his anguish, walks a few yards from the threshold, which he dreads to cross, and there, in the pitiless rain, in the gloomy hushed street, he stands for a minute or two bareheaded in silent prayer for strength to bear as a Chris tian this awful blow with which it has pleased the Lord to visit him ; for now and then a wave of wild demoniacal wrath, which almost staggers him, sweeps over him, making him feel more like devil than man. And then, in a few seconds more, he is in those rooms whose blank rayless windows he had gazed at from the street. What brooding ominous darkness and boding stillness dwells around, and yet what else can he expect at this hour ? With trembling hand he strikes a light and kindles a small lamp, and to his nervous disordered fancy the weak flickering flame sheds a ghastly weird light through the lofty handsome salon, the room that has become so dear and familiar in those few latter days, though but a short month ago it seemed so strange and unhomelike.

Is it not love, the presence of a beloved one, that oils with sweetest unguent the harsh new hinges of life, making all, however dissonant and jarring, soft and smooth and melodious ? How intensely it speaks to him of his Helen ; are there not traces of her late presence around him everywhere ? If she is gone, surely it must have been suddenly, without premeditation. But no ! How wrong, how wicked it is of him to think so devilish a thought. She is in her chamber but a few yards off quietly sleeping, doubtless dreaming loving dreams of him while he is desecrating her noble purity and faithfulness, by harbouring belief in such hideous slander even for a moment. What did that note, with its fiendish scorpion sting, say ? He can't remember ; and he again looks round the room slowly, while a strange wild troubled gleam grows in the clear calm steadfast eyes.

There is the book she had been reading, thrown face downwards, open where she had flung it when he came in early in the afternoon with the more or less sudden intimation that he must start for the South that night. He remembered she cried a little and clung about him, and he had laughingly told her not to be a little goose, that so antiquated a matron as she was ought to care nothing for her husband's goings or comings, save a general feeling, that his absence was a good riddance, and she had given a little hysterical sobbing laugh and kissed him, and then, after some almost nonsense lover-talk, she had gone off to see after his portmanteau, &c. And there in the far window was her work-table and the pretty artistic cap, she was embroidering for Master £.ion, who insisted, young rascal, on calling it his " smoking-cap," the needle was still stuck in it where she had laid it down carelessly to come to dinner, which was served a little earlier owing to his departure, and the piano stood open, and his favourite song was on the desk, that she had sung at his request shortly before he left ; how well he remembered every trifling incident of that afternoon and evening, and how the sweet voice trembled and broke a little at the words : — " O ! that 'twere possible, After long grief and pain, To find the arms of my true love Around me once again;" and he had lovingly chided her for a nervous darling ; and then, he moved a step or two, and his eye caught something on the carpet.

He stooped and picked it up. Ah ! the little odorous bunch of violets and heliotrope that she had worn in her bosom through the evening. The morning's post had brought a letter from dear friends in England, enclosing a few Torquay violets and a sprig of sweet-scented heliotrope ; violets and heliotrope in November. Well, it sufficiently marked the contrast between the Paris season and that of Devonshire ; it seemed like a little bit of their own dear land to the exiles, and after carefully keeping them in water all day Helen Dacre had pinned the tiny nosegay in her breast for dinner, and they had diffused a sweet faint perfume as she moved about. And her husband recollects that as he caught her to his arms for a final embrace almost his last impression was the clinging penetrating odour of her flowers, and now he holds the poor little withered posy in his hand, still it exhales a shadowy sweetness.

Why has it been thus tossed aside ? and why are the flowers so strangely, utterly dead ? They seem as if they had lain there many, many hours, and yet, his train went at eight, and it is now not quite two. Great God ! he is going mad, stark staring mad ! He is losing all count of time. He has grown oblivious of the fact that nearly thirty hours have elapsed since he stood in that room and held his wife to his heart and smelt the rich sweet scent of those little dead blossoms ; time for them to die, aye, and for a body and soul to die too. He has been looking around on all these tokens of her late presence, as if he had parted from her but the evening before, whilst a whole horrible day and night stretches between, and yet everything remains as he last saw it as if none had entered the room since.

Where is Rosalie ? Why does she not come and tell him of her mistress ? He had asked no question of the servant who admitted him. His pride had revolted from doing so ; but it had struck him that the man looked somewhat pale and troubled. But his wise's maid, where is she ? If Helen had gone c anywhere, she would have left a note, a message, with her. He will ring and question her. No, he will search the rooms himself first. It is all some horrible coincidence. Helen perhaps has been poorly, not able to rise and enter the salon since he left, and the servants, taking advantage of her indisposition, have neglected to arrange it ; or — and a wild gleam of hope darts across the thick pall of doubt and deadly conviction that has enveloped him the last few moments — possibly she has been summoned to her aunt, an elderly maiden lady, who lives some fifteen miles out of Paris, and whom Helen has driven out to see constantly since they came.

Some dozen years before, Miss Templeton, feeling desolate and lonely in her English home, from which the dearly loved members had been carried forth one by one to the not far distant graveyard, had come to France to join a lady who, in their far away youth, had been her and her sister's governess ; but as well as teacher and pupil she and Dorothy Templeton had been dear friends also, and this friendship had remained firm and unbroken through the years ; and so she left her native land, probably never to return, taking with her one faithful servant who had been with her since they were both girls, who had been with her through the sorrow of her life and had proved herself a true, staunch, steadfast friend. Miss Templeton was much attached to her niece, her only brother's only child, and Helen would have been with her daily since they came to Paris but for the inconvenience of the situation where she lived, a village near which no railway passed, and twice fifteen miles is a long drive in one day.

But she had promised to spend a fortnight, perhaps a whole month, with her aunt when they returned from the Riviera, if not before they went ; but as yet their plans had been too un certain to permit of her staying beyond a day. Three days ago Helen was with her last, and he remembers now her mentioning that Aunt Dorothy was ailing. Perhaps the lonely old woman had grown worse and sent for her niece, and Helen had gone, leaving Rosalie to look after little Lion, and also doubtless leaving with her a note to forward to him, her husband ; for the dear o-irl could not guess the malign influence that was at work, that had sent that diabolical telegram and written that hellish note. And so thinking, trying to cheat himself as long as remorseless fate will let him, he takes up the lamp and leaves the salon.

He will not summon Rosalie yet awhile ; perhaps he will not need to do so ; perhaps God in his infinite mercy will grant that he may find his darling resting peacefully in her quiet chamber. How shall he explain his return ? How shall he speak in that pure presence of the hideous mystery of devilry C that encompasses them, that dares with foul and dastard tongue to assail her, his angel, his wife ! From the salon the wretched man passes with hurried uneven step into the small dining-room adjoining, and thence through a smaller chamber which has served him as a study, or place rather to keep his plans and papers in since they came. A hasty glance scans in an instant the mantel piece in each room. A note in his wife's hand writing he half dreads, half longs to see. This room opens on to the landing, and facing him is one closed door.