CHAPTER XI.

AT FAULT.

Geoffrey Hossack rushed down to Stillmington as fast as a recklessly-driven hansom and an express train could take him. His heart seemed to sing aloud as he went, ‘I am coming, my love, I am coming; and we will part no more.’

How sweet, how rustic, how peaceful, the little uncommercial town seemed to him to-day in its verdant setting; the low hills, on whose grassy slopes tall chestnuts spread their wide branches, and the dark foliage of the beech gleamed silvery as the warm breezes ruffled it; fertile pastures where the aftermath grew deep, green tinged with russet—over all the land late summer’s vanishing glory.

‘I could live here with her for ever,’ he thought; ‘ay, in the humblest cottage half hidden among those green lanes, which seem to lead nowhere. I could live all my life with her, cut off from all the rest of the world, and never languish for its hollow pleasures, and never sigh for change. God grant I may find her reasonable! God grant that she may accept my simple assurance of her release, and make me happy!’

On the very threshold of Mrs. Bertram’s modest dwelling a sudden fear seized him. Something in the aspect of the house to-day struck him as unfamiliar. The window was shut—an unusual circumstance, for Janet loved air. The flowers in the little rustic stand that screened the window had a neglected look. There were dead leaves on the geraniums, which were wont to be so carefully tended. The care of those flowers had been Janet’s early morning task. How often had he walked this way before breakfast, for the sake of catching one chance glimpse of the noble face bending over those flowers!

‘Good Heavens, can she be ill?’ he thought with agonising fear. He knocked softly, lest she should be indeed lying ill up-stairs and the sound of the knocker disturb her.

The maid who opened the door had come straight from the washtub, breathless, with bare steaming arms.

‘Is Mrs. Bertram at home—and—and well?’ asked Geoffrey eagerly.

‘Mrs. Bertram, sir? O dear, no; she left us three days ago, and the apartments are to let. Missus doesn’t put up any bill, because she says it gives such a low look; but there’s a card at the grocer’s.’

‘Mrs. Bertram has moved!’ said Geoffrey, his heart beating very fast. ‘Where has she gone?’

It might be to the next street only. She had found the rooms small perhaps, as her pupils increased. Yet even a few minutes’ delay dashed his high hopes. It seemed hard to meet any kind of hindrance at the outset.

‘She didn’t leave no address,’ answered the girl; ‘she’s left Stillmington for some time. She said the air was relackshing at this time of year, and the little girl didn’t seem quite well. So she went. She means to come back in the winter, she told us, and go on with her pupils; but she was going somewheres by the sea.’

‘But surely she must have left some address with your mistress, in order that letters might be forwarded to her?’

‘No, she didn’t, sir. I heared missus ast her that very question about the letters, and she says to missus that it didn’t matter—there wouldn’t be no letters for her, not of no consequence, as she would write and tell her friends her new address. She didn’t exactly know where she was going, she says.’

‘When did she leave?’ asked Geoffrey in despair. How could the Fates treat him so hardly?

‘Three days ago—last Wednesday.’

The very day of his journey down to Hampshire. She had lost no time in taking flight. She had gone almost immediately after he left Stillmington. Could he doubt that her motive had been to avoid him—to flee temptation? For did he not know that she loved him?

‘Mrs. Bertram left very suddenly, did she not?’ he asked of the maid-of-all-work, who was breathing hard with impatience to be gone, knowing that her mistress awaited her in the washhouse, and would assuredly lecture her for gossiping.

‘Yes, sir, it was quite suddent. She gave missus a week’s rent instead of the reglar notice.’

‘And you have really no idea where she went when she left you?’

‘No, sir. She went away by the London train. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Geoffrey with a sigh.

He rewarded the girl with a half-crown, almost mechanically, and departed heartsore. How could she be so cruel as to hide herself from him—to put a new barrier between them! Was she afraid of his importunity—afraid that she would lack strength to resist his pleading?

By the sea! She had gone to the sea-side. That was information of the vaguest character.

‘If I have to scour the English coast, I will find her,’ he said to himself desperately.

But it was just possible she might leave England—that she might hide herself in some obscure village in Normandy or Brittany, where the cockney-tourist had not yet penetrated. The field was wide, to say the least of it.

‘She will surely let her brother know where she is?’ he thought presently; and with that thought came a brief moment of hopefulness, which quickly changed again to despair. If she wanted to avoid him, Geoffrey, she would scarcely trust her secret to his bosom friend Lucius.

There was that ever-ready medium—that universal go-between—the second column of the _Times_. He might advertise. He wrote a long appeal, so worded that, to the stranger, it was an absolute hieroglyphic, telling her that she was free—the only barrier that could divide them had been long removed—and entreating her to communicate with him immediately. This appeal he headed ‘_Voi che sapéte_’—the opening words of her favourite song. She could hardly fail to understand.

But what if she did not see the _Times_? And if she were out of England, or even buried deep in some remote English watering-place, the chances against her seeing it were as ten to one. He sent the same advertisement to Galignani, and to a dozen provincial newspapers, chosen almost at random, but covering a wide area. He sent cheques to pay for a month’s insertions in every paper. He felt himself transformed into a man of business, and went to work as actively as if he had been advertising a new cocoa or a new hair-dye.

This done, and there being nothing to detain him at Stillmington, he went back to Hillersdon, much to the delight of his cousins Belle and Jessie, who had in no wise expected this prompt return of the deserter. There was some comfort to him in the idea of being amidst the scenes of Janet’s youth. He went over to Tyrrelhurst, the cathedral town, saw the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages, and found the entry of that fatal union which stood between him and happiness.

Yes, there it was: ‘Frederick Vandeleur, gentleman, &c. &c., to Janet Davoren.’ The ceremony had been legal enough. Nothing but some previous contract could invalidate such a marriage; and was it not very probable that this villain’s assertion of a previous marriage was but a lie, invented to release him from a union that had become troublesome to him?

‘I wish to Heaven I had as good a certificate of the scoundrel’s death,’ thought Geoffrey; ‘but even if I find her and tell her that he is dead, I doubt if my bare assertion will satisfy her scruples.’

He made a pilgrimage to Wykhamston, prowled about the gray old church, talked to the sexton, who had been an old man twenty years ago, and who calmly survived all changes, like a being over whom Time had no power. From him Geoffrey heard a great deal about the old rector and his beautiful daughter, who had played the organ, and how a stranger had come to Wykhamston, who took a great fancy to playing the organ, and played wonderful; and how Miss Davoren used oftentimes to be in the church practising when the stranger came in; and how not long after she ran away from home, as some folks said, and he, the sexton, was afraid no good had come of those meetings in the church.

To this Geoffrey listened silently, wounded, as he always was, by the thought that she whom he loved so dearly had left her home under a cloud, were it but the lightest breath of suspicion.

Even to this sexton he must needs defend his idol.

‘I have reason to know that Miss Davoren was married to that gentleman before he came to Wykhamston,’ he said. ‘It was a secret marriage, and she was foolish enough to leave her home without informing her parents of the step she had taken; but she was that man’s wife, and no shadow of dishonour can tarnish her name.’

‘Deary me!’ exclaimed the sexton; ‘and our poor dear rector took it so to heart. Some folks think it was that as killed him, though the doctors called it heart-disease of long standing.’

Geoffrey went from the church to the rectory, an overgrown thatched cottage, quaint and old, with plastered walls and big chimney-stacks; the garden all abloom with late roses—the new incumbent evidently a prosperous gentleman.

He loitered by the tall privet-hedge a little while, gathered a rose from a bush that grew within reach—a rose which he put carefully in his pocket-book—frail memorial of her he loved.

This pilgrimage occupied an entire day; for the young man lingered about Wykhamston as if loth to leave the spot where Janet had once lived—as if he almost hoped to meet the phantom of her girlhood in one of those low water meadows where he wandered listlessly by the reedy trout streams.

Belle and Jessie pouted a little at this desertion, yet would not complain. Were they not fortunate in dear Geoffrey’s return? And if they questioned or teased him he might take flight again.

‘I hope you are not going to desert us to-morrow,’ said Belle, on the evening of his return from Wykhamston.

‘Why do you lay such a tremendous stress upon to-morrow?’ asked Geoffrey, with a comfortable yawn. He was stretched on a rustic bench outside the drawing-room windows smoking, while these damsels conversed with him from within.

‘Have you forgotten?’

‘Forgotten what?’ with another yawn. ‘How sleepy this country air makes one!’

‘Yes, and how stupid sometimes!’ exclaimed Jessie. ‘You might have remembered that to-morrow is the day for Lady Baker’s _fête_.’

‘Ah, to be sure! She’s a very nice old party, that Lady Baker of yours. I shall make a point of being in attendance upon you.’