The Destroyer

Front matter

NOVELS AT SIX SHILLINGS EACH. Uniform with this Volume. TALES OF UNREST. Bv Joseph Conrad. THE WHITEHEADED BOY. By George Bartram. THE MUTINEERS. Bv Louis Becke and Walter Jefferv. THE SILVER CHRIST, and other Stories. By Ouida. EVELYN INNES. By George Moore. THE SCHOOL FOR SAINTS. By John Oliver Hobbes. OUTLAWS OF THE MARCHES. By Lord Ernest Hamilton. HUGH WYNNE- By Dr Weir Mitchell. THE TORMENTOR. By Benjamin Swift. THE PEOPLE OF CLOPTON. By George Eartram. PACIFIC TALES. By Louis Becke. PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE. By Amelia E. Barr. THE GREY MAN. Bv S. R. Crockett. EFFIE HETHERINGTON. By Robert Buchanan. AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS. By Joseph Conrad. ALMAYER'S FOLLY. By Joseph Conrad. A FIRST FLEET FAMILY. By Louis Becke and W. Jefferv. THE EBBING OF THE TIDE. Bv Louis Becke. TALES OF JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.

THE STICKIT MINISTER. By S. R. Crockett. THE RAIDERS. By S. R. Crockett. NANCY NOON. By Benjamin Swift. THE LILAC SUNBONNET. By S. R. Crockett. A DAUGHTER OF THE FEN. By J. T. Bealby. THE HERB MOON. By John Oliver Hobbes. TROOPER PETER HALKET. By Olive Schreiner. MRS KEITH'S CRIME. By Mrs W. K. Clifford. LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN. " Piaga A amor non si sana mat * BY Benjamin Swift LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN PATERNOSTER SQUARE [All rights reserved.] To M. MAURICE MAETERLINCK Sir, I offer these rude Northern chapters, not because they are fit to be offered, but because even a rude gift may be allowed to express a sincere admiration. Yours, with respect, THE AUTHOR. NOTE Most of the incidents in connection with the Siege of Paris are taken from the Journal des Goncourt. ■) CONTENTS

Book I

— THE WRONG CHOICE CHAP. page I. MAKES SURPRISING DISCOVERIES 1 II. FINDS TRAGEDY STILL HALF ASLEEP .... 9 III. SOUNDS AN ALARUM CLOCK WHICH WAKENS TRAGEDY 20 IV. ATTENDS THE UNBURYING OF AN OLD SIN ... 39 55 V. ATTENDS THE BURYING OF AN OLD SINNER VI. THINKS THAT LOVE DISCOVERS BEAUTY WHERE NONE WOULD SEE IT 04

Book II

— THE UNEASY LOVER CHAP. I. DISCOVERS ONE OF THE SUPREME MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF FRANCE, AND OF TWO ENGLISHMEN 95 II. L'HOMME JOYEUX 121 III. PERTURBATION 141 IV. THE DOPPELGANGER 101 V. DREAMS 174 VI. "AH, LOVE! SOMEWHAT LET be!" . , . . CONTENTS XIV

Book III

— THE TWIN SACRIFICE CHAP. PAGE I. MRS PROUDFOOT RETURNS 203 II. THE PLEBEIAN WINS 213 III. THE ELDER MRS PROUDFOOT IS TOLD THE TRUTH . 225 IV. SUSPENSE 239 V. THE YOUNGER MRS PROUDFOOT IS TOLD IHE TRUTH . 251 VI. LIGHT O' THE SUN 2(!0

Book I The Wrong Choice Chaptee

I MAKES SURPRISING DISCOVERIES Whereas Lady Eimmon had begun to talk early about the sort of man she would choose for a son-in law, Sir Saul appeared to take no genuine interest in that question. Whether he would be fat or lean, dark or fair, even whether he was going to be rich or poor, it seemed to matter nothing to Sir Saul. " But his temperament ! " said Lady Eimmon, " that is the main thing." " They're all choleric," replied Sir Saul. He was too bored by his wife's suggestions, especially when they referred to the spiritual endowment of him whom Providence was to send as their son. " We should have had one of our own," he said, and used to go whistling to the kennels. A Indeed, Sir Saul was almost always out of doors, which was taken as a bad sign. He preferred his hounds and jesses. He said he could keep his hounds in leash well enough, whereas he never could control the yelling pack of his wife's words.

" ' Yelling ! ' was the word your father used," said Lady Eimmon to Violet, " as if I yell, and I have never got over the way he described my voice. He said my voice was an ' earsore ! ' That was the voice which, when I married him, was ' a bird's warble.' It agitated me for a week, and I have never forgotten it." But she accepted her illusions, and reserved all her affection for her daughter. She determined to discover a safe marriage. She felt it to be surprising that Sir Saul had turned so careless on a matter so grave. " Let the girl decide," he said. " But it is not her business, it is ours, you strange man ! " she repeated until she drove him away again. " Men don't like emphatic women, mother," said Violet. " Women who shake their heads at every third word, you know." " Indeed ! " said Lady Eimmon, astonished.

It was the first time Violet had ventured to give criticism and advice. Lady Eimmon, in spite of similar provocations, adored Violet, and had long ago decided that no son-in-law could ever be good enough. Whoever he was going to MAKES SURPRISING DISCOVERIES be, she hated him in advance. Violet would be thrown away in any case, but, at least, the shock could be made as mild as possible. " Now, child, tell me whom would it be ? " she asked, allowing Violet for a moment to consider the business as her own. " Edgar," said Violet. That was Edgar Besser, son of their rich neighbour of Mulvey House ; " superb youth," as was said, but with some awkward leanings towards the priesthood. " Edgar ! And you know he is perhaps a priest already ! " "He'll not remain a priest. Leave me, mother, please," said Violet.

Lady Eimmon thought that if she had a strange husband she had now a frantic child. She could make headway with neither of them. In vain she had told Violet that whether Edgar Besser — a good enough family to be sure — was going to be a priest or not, he never would be her choice, and therefore never could be her daughter's. " Edgar ! " persisted Violet, even > till the very night she saw him drive past with his luggage on his way to Oxford. And, at any rate, a prospective young priest, driving in his father's carriage, clasping a missal, should hardly have risen in the carriage and kissed his hand. He should have been kissing his missal rather — unless, perhaps, the lips of his missal were already found to be too cold. It all seemed to mean that one day he might come driving as rapidly back again.

At least so pondered Violet. Not once or twice a hand waved to her through dreams as if to warn her he was coming, and she felt the power of that dream-gesture. And she may have been right when she wrote in her book that "Many a cathedral priest is doubtless an exiled and disguised priest of Apollo, and swings a sad censer." But Edgar was not yet a priest. He was merely studying at Oxford, although his friends prophesied that sooner or later the Catholic Church would be his goal. " It is all Edgar, Edgar, with her yet ! " exclaimed Lady Eimmon to Sir Saul. " AVhat about it ? " said he. Violet was drooping, and it became necessary to look for guidance and advice elsewhere. But, indeed, Lady Eimmon seldom turned to her husband for advice, and usually applied to her brother. Prince Euxine, who was their invariable guest at regular intervals.

The Prince's visits used to occur so often, and took so long to expire, that Sir Saul had years ago discovered his brother-in law to be insufferable. There was no other word. During the first months of his marriage it was doubtless a desirable thing to enter a club with a prince as kinsman. But that vanity had long ago worn off. The Prince began to develop surprising migratory MAKES SURPRISING DISCOVERIES habits, and he invariably hibernated at Eimmon House. His letters announcing his arrival always ended with : " And now I am coming to bow in the House of Eimmon." There was no bowing him out. Sir Saul had long ago discovered the futility of an " international marriage." " We will do good to each other," Prince Euxine used to say. " We will break down racial animosities after you wed my sister, you know, Saul."

" These Eussians ! " exclaimed Sir Saul, when his house was overrun by his wife's kindred. Lady Eimmon, subduing her voice for once with success, only looked very steadily across the breakfast table by way of feminine rebuke, when Sir Saul muttered an oath over any fresh announcement of the Prince's arrival. " I hope he's his own cigars this time, ma'am, that's all." But he always came smiling to the gate, and brought the Prince grandly and brotherly in. Lady Eimmon longed for her brother's arrival, because, in spite of what might have been expected to the contrary, Sir Saul became more amiable during his visits. If he treated him with inward contempt, he also showed full outward respect, and it was even said that Euxine was the only one who could " manage " Sir Saul, and that in some way Sir Saul feared him.

A certain gloom was settling on Eimmon House, but it was sometimes lifted when the Prince came. Sir Saul, Lady Eimmon, and the proud Violet found things stifling when given up to each other's company. " You see," wrote Violet in her journal, " how many small jagging miseries accumulate like needles when two or three people come together." "Your father is so strange, Violet — strange and capricious," said Lady Eimmon. " You mean selfish," replied Violet. Lady Eimmon fell to weeping, and said she was a persecuted woman. " You know what I have suffered. We are being talked about, and I feel that things are coming to a height in this house." " Yes," said Violet, " and I've grown up in an atmosphere of suspicion and dread — stifling it is — and I've never heard anything except yours and father's muffled anger."

" Child, is it my fault ? Do I not wish to see you well out of it ? I see now that English and Eussian tempers never will agree. We are lions and bears trying to live in the same cage. And yet I've become absolutely English for him," said Lady Eimmon. But then she broke off to talk more excitedly. " I wish one thing, Violet," she said. " Will you follow your father some day through the wood in the afternoon when he goes out ? " ;' No," said Violet, and hastily left the room. It was not the first time that that request had been MAKES SURPRISING DISCOVERIES made, and the same answer returned in the same way. Although Prince Euxine knew a good deal of the inner privacy of his sister's household, he would have been surprised to be told that quarrels occurred so often, and with such rapidity. The cause lay far deeper than in a mere collision of temperaments.

That would have been bad enough, but it was an effect rather than a cause. Subtle enquiries, not advanced in words, but in looks and gestures between Sir Saul and Lady Eimmon, and between Violet and Sir Saul had been growing sharper and sharper of late. Lady Eimmon stood before the impalpable truth of a coming disgrace with the sort of feeling a child has when it doesn't know the meaning of a word, but guesses that it means something unclean. " Follow him through the wood, do ! " she said in haste to Cubitt, the woodman, whom, in her desperation, she had made her confidant. " Quick ! he has gone this moment ! Keep well behind ! " She delayed to bring her suspicions to Euxine only till they were all horribly ripe. It must have been at that time that Violet, whose intelligence was much swifter than her mother's, and was long ago in posses sion of the truth that made the House of Eimmon bow down, never to rise any more — I say, it must have been in those days of sickening mistrust and innuendo that Violet wrote in her journal: "Marriage fails if it is founded on the fiction of the permanence of the emotions.

If the emotions were permanent, they would not be emotions. Emotion comes in tides. Everything is episodic, even vice." " I feel ... I do," exclaimed Lady Eimmon, sinking into her chair, and covering her face with her hands, and ruining her bodice by twisting herself within it, " that I have been living with a bad man for years ! " CHAPTEE II FINDS TRAGEDY STILL HALF ASLEEP Prince Euxine never lost any time in making himself at home. The first thing the valet had to do was to remove his white gaiters and walking shoes, and bring a pair of riding boots. "Whiten the gaiters, boy, and take this hat and steam it. Don't let the iron be too hot else you'll burn the silk." The servants at Eimmon House had a peculiar con tempt for the Prince. "Think o' one o' our English princes steamin' his old hats, and gettin' gaiters whitened !

" He used to bring a shabby English man-servant with him in frayed clothes, who shaved him in the morning, and told tales in the servants' hall. " The Prince is parsimonious on soap," he said, " I daren't waste it. I put on a thin, watery lather, and then he complains about me scraping his chin. As if such a beard don't require pails o' soap to soften it! I feel inclined to cut out that moustache o' his. I would make 'im look better, don't ye think ? " " Better ! — not it. His skin's like a pig's back," said one irreverently. " Our aristocracies' skin's prime clear and soft." " A prince ! A Eussian prince ! Our Sir Saul's more a prince than 'im. If you saw our gold plate and the dishes, and her ladyship's dresses, and Miss Violet's, it would make your court dim-tawdry ! " While Sir Saul's household cried up his possessions, Prince Euxine's man was never content till he made his master appear to be a hopelessly indigent aristocrat.

" We're rich paupers," said he. " It's like it," said they. " What's he coming living on us for? Blessing for 'im that his sister married our Sir Saul." But of course the Prince received obsequious bows if he met any of the servants about the grounds. They even admitted that he seemed to have as much authority on the estate as Sir Saul. The chief peasant, old Isaac Dagon, always brought round to the main door, an hour after the Prince's arrival, the dappled grey mare. It was on this animal — which Sir Saul allotted to his brother-in-law because, as he said, it was only fit to carry old women to picnics — that the Prince made excursions into the woods and fields to see what progress was being made round the home farm. " And what sort o' home farm have he ? " asked the Eimmon servants in scorn.

"We'd be ashamed to be an Englishman like you serving such a poor lord." "That's true," said the dejected menial, "but we must take no less than we get. Home farm ! Ho, ho ! nothing grows there but snow in the winter and ants and field mice in the spring. It's a moor." The Prince described it otherwise. " You remember," he said to Lady Eimmon, " the wood, our wood where I used to do tiaga ? * Well, I have cut a great deal of it down, and I think Saul should do the same here," and he pointed in the direc tion he meant. " I'm sure Saul will do it, Euxy," said Lady Eimmon. " And I'm sure Saul will do nothing of the sort ! " said Sir Saul in private. Prince Euxine had a passion for removing trees, and if he had got his way he would have made the Eimmon estate as bare as his own moor. He enjoyed free winds and open lands.

It was always an event when he mounted the dappled mare. Sir Saul, Lady Eimmon, and old Isaac invariably assisted in case of any accident when he made the supreme leap from a chair or from the door- * A Russian practice of waiting for game in the woods at dusk. step. He used to meet old Moll with peace-offerings of sugar and buns. " Steady, old mistress — do be steady ! " he said in a humble key. Probably he never would have mounted at all had he not thought it becoming in a prince. He fed the horse from the saddle, en chemin, as he said, to keep it in continuous good-humour. The mare sometimes stopped and turned its head in expectancy without being bid. It was then that Euxine ventured to use his riding-whip in a hesitating way. But Moll knew how to keep backing till the Prince surrendered and delivered another bon bon.

" Get on, greedy English beast ! " exclaimed Euxine, and began to flog. " He might as well ride a crab ! " said Sir Saul, as he watched these regressive movements, and then turned in to enjoy an hour's respite from his brother-in-law's com pany. And it was always that hour which Lady Eimmon chose to give the last touches to her brother's apartments. " The Prince is coming, you know," she used to say to Edgar Besser's mother, "and we are making preparations." That was long ago ; Edgar Besser's mother was dead, but the Prince was still periodically announced as bein" on the way. " YTou were talking about Violet's wedding," he once said to Lady Eimmon, on his return from an excursion with Moll, " eh, ma petite ? " and he turned to Violet herself. " Oh, no," said Violet, and left the room, with a forced smile.

" Yes," said Lady Eimmon, as if she had a great deal to communicate, and felt its oppressiveness. " Yes, Violet appears to me to be more English than Eussian. It may come from my long stay in this country that she has taken on English ways. She has English pride, and takes completely after Saul. . . . Well, we must talk. We'll do nothing else all these months. And I'm decided on one thing, Euxy — the young man will be good. I mean to lay stress on that — on his character, you know — the shape of his soul, I might say." " The soul, sister, appears to be a matter of zoology nowadays." " Such days they are ! " said Lady Eimmon, as if the age had brought a special affliction to herself. " The sin of the age is criticism ; everything is criticised adversely — from corsets to parents. A child thinks nothing now of addressing her mother as if she were an unpleasant tea-gown."

Euxine laughed, and lit one of his brother-in-law's cigars. " Where's Saul ? " he said. " Oh, he's always out. Horses, dogs, game, pigeons, rabbits, and — and other things" (here Lady Eimmon had been forming her lips to say a word which fell to pieces in her mouth). " That's what he's interested in. He should have kept a menagerie ! " " The world is largely a menagerie, Mathilde. Have you never thought how significant it is that the coats of-arms of the European nations are made up of por traits of savage beasts. We've the bear — England the lion — Germany and Austria hideous vultures. I think Siena was a bear too, and Florence a lion. They shake hands with each other in a Mosaic on the floor of Siena cathedral, if I remember. Nothing ever looked so impossible. It all points to the fact that the world is a sort of frightful jungle.

It does look as if we had the beasts for ancestors, else why would we keep that savage heraldry. Beaks and claws are behind everything." Euxine's general timidity made him a great enemy to all physical conflict. But he was far from mild looking. The moustache which his servant condemned on æsthetic grounds gave him rather a fierce expression, which was augmented by the red gloss of his face. Physical bravery and beauty he had none. He had never been in the army, and had spent an idle life manœuvring his scanty patrimony with some skill. If he was interested in anything it was in the useful ness of other people to himself, and he always judged things as a pure worldling. He would never make a man an open enemy so long as he might be useful. He had no love for his kinsman, Sir Saul, but he knew he was valuable.

Although he remained a bachelor he had been a great marriage-maker among other people, but it was generally more to his own profit than to theirs. Violet trembled for her uncle's officiousness. The day was when she had had a full respect for him, and now every one recognised it as a matter of course, although Violet had long outgrown it. " You are such a favourite with the Prince ! " her friends used to say. " Old dolt ! " she wrote in her book. It was becoming difficult to keep up the fiction. Violet felt that the day was past when the discussion of any project should be reserved till his arrival. She had been taught never to look for any wisdom from her father, and always to turn to the Prince. It was not long since he used to take her on his knee, although, as he admitted himself, she " had outgrown the situation."

She objected to the moustache, which pricked her like a wire brush when it came too close. " Oh uncle, you're jaggy ! " she used to say. Indeed, it did look as if Euxine was regretting the English custom which forbids a union between an uncle and his niece. In Germany, where the Prince had a small estate, it was different. If he and Violet had been in Germany " There is time, plenty," he used to say to his sister when she urged him on the subject of Violet's wedding. "We shall talk. I intend to take time and be careful." It seemed to be agreed on all sides that it was the Prince who had the disposal of Violet's hand. " The task of bridegroom-finding," he said, " consists in a skilful process of selection and omission ; winnowing, winnowing, until, by perpetual rejection, you arrive at the few highest types and then make your final choice.

Leave it to me, Saul and Mathilde." Saul seemed willing and likewise Mathilde, while Violet, guarding silence, felt satire pricking her lip. " Her eyes, you know ! " said Euxine to Mathilde, "and then that Eimmon gait, which really we must admire, although we were brought up to other things." There was certainly a great deal to talk about, although Lady Eimmon's suspicions concerning Sir Saul were not yet full-grown. For instance, Cubitt, the woodman, came running back with no damnatory evidence. " No, ladyship, I've searched the woods and there's not a wench in't. I saw no red cheeks except the cranberries ! Sir Saul went two miles with his gun, and I came slow behind. He turned at the big pond, shot two wood pigeons, and came back the same road." "Keep your tongue to yourself, then," said Lady Eimmon, dropping a sovereign in his hand, "and be ready when I need you."

She went to her room, and tried to chastise herself out of suspicion. But could she? Not the least of her troubles, surely, was the astounding fact, long known to the neighbourhood and only slowly brought home to herself, that Violet's beauty, which was indisputable, was somehow shared by a little peasant girl in their midst, Miriam Dagon. Lady Eimmon had seen it herself, and had at first simply expressed her astonish ment at Nature's freaks : at which all the women " teheed ! " " Simple Lady Eimmon ! " they said afterwards, " Now, if two women met and saw at a glance that they resembled each other very much, Euxy, they would feel indignant, wouldn't they ? " " Almost more indignant," replied Euxine, " than if their dresses at a ball happened to be of the same stuff and made in the same way.

But what do you mean ? " Lady Eimmon burst out weeping until her brother had to go and take her by the hand. "What is it, Mathilde?" She had never really brought herself to face this perturbing truth. She refused to possess it, and B wanted to see if her brother would refuse it also as the wicked hallucination of her own and other people's brains. " That peasant you've heard about ! Saul's slave ! " It was a Eussian habit which made her talk of slaves. She said no more, but looked anxiously at her brother. Unluckily, she saw a dark smile pass over his face, and he slightly protruded his tongue, and pressed it against his upper lip, as he always did when he discovered quirks in men and things. He had known it, then. " Oh gracious, is it true ? " cried Lady Eimmon in a sore paroxysm. " I know it.

Oh ! . . Oh help me, Euxy — is it ? " and she bent her body double. But Euxine asked her what she meant. He said he didn't understand. " True ? What ? " " Why did you smile ? " she cried ; " it was wicked of you ! " " Smile ? I was thinking of other things, Mathilde. Y'ou're hysterical; I don't see what you mean. Tell me." " Oh, no," she said, " I'm glad you don't see. I'm ill just ; it's nerves. I'm always afraid something bad will happen, and I lose control of myself." She went to her room, while Euxine smiled and smiled, and contracted his eyes, and nodded his head ever so gently. He looked very closely at Sir Saul all that day, while they spoke about hedging and ditching. His scrutiny of Violet was likewise as persistent though it attracted no attention. In the afternoon old Moll was brought round, and after the Prince had gone successfully through the ordeal of jumping on her back, she ambled with him through the estate towards the home farm where was "the little peasant."

But before he started he went softly to his sister's room, where he found her still sobbing. " Oh, I'm better," she said. " I've kept the best news till the end," he said. " I've got a splendid proposal for Violet. I wished to give you a surprise." " Oh, who is it ? " said Lady Eimmon, rallying and brightening. " How good of you ! Yes, I'm living for her." " I'll tell you when I come back," he said. " Think." " Oh, tell me just now, Euxy ! " But he went, saying : " Ta, ta." CHAPTEE III SOUNDS AN ALARUM CLOCK WHICH WAKENS TRAGEDY Now it may have been a compliment to Miriam Dagon, old Isaac's child — as we were once all given to understand — when she heard that she resembled Miss Violet, but it could be nothing except distressing news for Violet. That Nature, prodigal of types, should have fixed a resemblance so startling between well born and base-born seemed sufficiently intolerable, but it was peculiarly malicious to place them in sight of each other.

Yet there could be no serious question of the truth. Violet was twenty-three and Miriam only seventeen, and, of course, the one was full-formed, whereas the other was a raw girl. Yet the difference of age and full development only served to emphasise the peculiarity of the resemblance between them. Violet had got to know it early, not suddenly, but with a creeping sense of bewilderment as her intelligence began to grasp the possibilities of moral mishap. It had coloured all her girlhood sombrely. It had made her silent when she should have laughed in gay ripples. She felt a sense of something wrong, but it was already so complex a feeling that she could not reduce it to its cause. She had played with Miriam although six years were between them. They had played together in innocence, which seemed cruelly naive in face of what all the countryside was saying.

And then Miriam got to know it much later, with as keen a surprise — but it was more vanity than surprise. It became at first pure foolish delight. Each single individual, old Isaac for one, for instance, got to know it, some sooner, some later — Isaac got to know it very late — by a sort of unseen process of revelation which was really the result of unconscious stages of sight and hearing. We are surprised that Mulvey tolerated Sir Saul so long. But there were causes for that ; also it is easy enough to say that if the parties interested had had any wits Miriam could have been removed as a baby. Would that have been easy ? That would have brought things more swiftly still to a more ugly height. Would Isaac have allowed his dear baby, as he supposed her to be, or his child when she was two years, or four years, or even eight years old, to be sent suddenly off to the neighbouring shire, or to a big town, for instance, or anywhere else ?