CHAPTER XXXII.

Norman found his mother very ill. The doctor did not forbid all hope; but a crisis was approaching. They could only wait. Norman was very fond of his mother, and greatly upset, and he put off writing his letter to Trafford until the morrow; and in the morning he, of course, read the news of the duke’s sudden death.

He would have dashed off to Belfayre then and there, but he could not leave his mother; and he did the next best thing to going—sat down and wrote a letter to Trafford—the letter of a close and dear friend—and adding that the moment he could leave his mother he would hasten to Belfayre on the chance of being some use. He sent his love to Esmeralda, and his “kind regards” to Lilias. Then he posted his letter with his own hands, and returned to his mother’s bedside to mourn; for the duke had always been very good to him, and he loved the old man.

The letter reached Belfayre the next morning, and was carried[253] up with scores of others in the post-bag, which was placed on a side-table in the breakfast-room.

For the last two days Lady Ada had opened the bag, and helped read and answer the letters, and this morning Lilias gave the key to her almost as a matter of course.

Almost the first envelope that fell from the bag as she emptied it on the table was Norman’s, addressed to Trafford. She recognized the handwriting in a moment, and her face grew hot. Norman writing to Trafford! What could he have to say? News of Esmeralda! She turned the letter over in her hand with a thirsty longing; then she opened it. It would be easy to say that she had opened it by mistake.

Its contents amazed her. Norman wrote as if his mother were actually ill, and as if—as if he were innocent.

She stood gaping at the badly written scrawl—Norman was anything but literary in his tastes—as if she could scarcely credit her eyes. Norman innocent! Then where was Esmeralda? She looked at the postmark; it bore the Oakfield stamp right enough; the letter had been posted there. She was confused and bewildered, and had the letter still in her hand when Lilias entered the room. She slipped the letter in her pocket, and went on opening the others.

“Here is a telegram from Trafford,” said Lilias in the hushed voice in which they all spoke now. “He lost the train last night, but will come by this morning’s. Esmeralda”—Lady Ada started and turned her pale face—“Esmeralda is ill. She is at Deepdale with Lady Wyndover. Trafford says it is the shock, and that she will not be able to come down for some days—perhaps a week. I—I am almost glad that she is not here. I will write to her to-day. Poor Esmeralda! I know exactly how she feels.” She sighed. “Are there many letters? Any that must be answered?”

“There are a great many; they are all condolences as far as I have got,” replied Lady Ada, with a peculiar dryness in her voice.

Was it true that Esmeralda was at Deepdale? If so, Trafford had seen her, had become reconciled, perhaps.

Trafford arrived in the afternoon and went straight to the library, and Lilias found him there, seated at the table, with his head in his hands.

He looked up and tried to smile as she entered, but the attempt was a ghastly failure.

“Esmeralda?” was Lilias’s first word.

He looked down and pulled some letters toward him.

[254]

“She is at Deepdale,” he said. “She—she is ill. The shock—”

“Yes, I can understand that,” said Lilias. “Did she look very ill?”

“I—I did not see her,” he said, with feigned easiness. “There was no time. I saw Lady Wyndover. Esmeralda—there is nothing serious—she is prostrated—just that. She will be better—” The string of falsehoods broke off short, and with a gesture of impatience he took up a pen. “Are these all the letters?” he asked.

He had already searched among them, hoping against hope, for a letter, line, one word, from Esmeralda.

“Those are all,” said Lilias. “Ada has been attending to them;” and she looked gratefully at Lady Ada as she entered the room at that moment.

Ada’s hand, as it hung at her side, could feel the sharp edge of Norman’s letter in her pocket. Should she take it out and give it to him? She glanced at his face covertly, and its haggardness encouraged her. She had heard him say that he had not seen Esmeralda. They were still apart, wherever she might be; he still thought her guilty. She would keep the letter from him and trust to chance. Fate seemed to be playing the game for her still.

The day of the funeral arrived, and the black-clad crowd of friends and neighbors, gentle and simple, followed the old duke to his last resting-place in the huge marble vault in the crypt of Belfayre church. He had been very popular as well as great, and there were many wet eyes among the multitude; and not a few were moved to tears as much by the sight of the son—the new duke—as by the remembrance of the father; for Trafford looked like one who sorrows without hope of comfort. There was something awe-inspiring in the death-like calm of his face, in which every clear-cut feature seemed drawn and sharpened, and his most familiar friends among the mourners watched him aghast and somewhat puzzled.

“I am afraid that Trafford must be anxious about his wife,” said one. “She is at Deepdale—that place of Lady Wyndover’s, you know—ill. I saw it in the papers. I hope she isn’t worse than we think.”

When the funeral was over and the somber guests had departed, Trafford shut himself up in the library and remained there alone till far into the night. There was a mass of papers on the table before him—for with his dukedom his new responsibilities had commenced and were clamoring for attention—but he looked at none of them. He could not[255] even think of his dead father. Esmeralda, Esmeralda—it was all Esmeralda!

In the morning Lilias came to him with the red rings round her eyes.

“Do you think I might go up to Esmeralda, Trafford?” she said. “Ada has offered to stay—she is so good and kind—and I could come back this evening.”

She put the question wistfully, and was rather startled by his manner of receiving it and refusing it.

“Certainly not,” he said, almost harshly. “You can not leave Belfayre just now. You must remain here. Besides, I am going to her to-day.” He felt that he should go mad if he remained in the vast house with the echoes of Esmeralda’s voice and laugh alone breaking the silence; for wherever he went he seemed to see and hear her, and everything he saw and touched seemed associated with her.

He went up to town and wandered from his rooms to the club, from the club to his rooms. Men and women greeted him with hushed voices and sympathetic looks, and he returned their greetings with the unnatural calmness which had fallen upon him since he had discovered her flight; but very often he did not know to whom he was speaking. He was leading a life in death, moving and speaking like a man in a dream. He had promised Lady Wyndover that he would seek for Esmeralda at once; but he did not seek for her; he felt that it was of no use. By this time she and Norman were hidden away beyond pursuit.

And he missed Norman by just a few yards and a few minutes. For as he walked out of the Marlborough, with his head bent low and his hot eyes fixed on the pavement, Norman turned the corner of St. James’s Street. They were actually within hail of each other. If they had but known it!

The crisis they had been anxiously waiting for at Oakfield was past, and Lady Druce was better; so much better that Norman could leave her for a few hours, though not long enough to go down to Belfayre. He had seen the paragraph in the papers stating that Esmeralda was ill at Deepdale, and he thought that he might, at any rate, run down there and hear how she was. Lady Wyndover would see him for a few minutes, and he should have tidings of—of all at Belfayre, and Lilias. And Lady Druce urged him to go.

“I am going to get well quite quickly now, dear, and”—she added, mother-like—“I don’t like to think of your being shut up here in this dull place. Yes; go, Norman!”

He had to go to London to buy some articles of mourning—gloves[256] and a hat-band, and so on, which he could not obtain in primitive Oakfield—and so he passed down St. James’s Street within a stone’s-throw of Trafford.

He walked from the station to Deepdale and rang the bell. No one came immediately, and the door being open, he walked into the little hall. As he did so, he heard a faint cry of amazement, and—as it seemed to him, horror—and turning sharply, saw, through the door of the drawing-room, Lady Wyndover standing looking at him with white face and startled eyes, as if she had sprung up at the sound of his footsteps.

He entered the room with outstretched hand.

“Lady Wyndover, I am sorry I startled you. Please forgive me!”

She did not seem to see his hand, but stared at him breathlessly.

“You! Where is—Esmeralda?” she gasped.

With his hand still extended, Norman returned her gaze with one almost as startled and bewildered as her own.

“Esmeralda!” he echoed; and he looked up at the ceiling helplessly. “Esmeralda? Where? She is here, is she not?”

Lady Wyndover stifled a cry and pointed a shaking hand at the door.

He closed it and stood regarding her wonderingly. Had she taken leave of her senses? She looked ill and anxious, and her manner was fearfully strange.

“How—how dare you come here?” she said at last, her indignation at his presence, at his offer of his hand, overwhelming for the moment her anxiety respecting Esmeralda.

“How dare I? For God’s sake, what do you mean?” he exclaimed. “Why do you look at me like this—why do you talk to me! What about Esmeralda? She is here, isn’t she?” And he looked round vaguely.

Lady Wyndover approached him unsteadily, her eyes distended.

“Do you mean to say that you don’t know?” she whispered. “Are you trying to deceive me, to—to brazen it out? You know that she is not here!”

“Not here? I saw in the papers that she was here—ill. Where is she, then?”

“You know!” she repeated, fiercely. “You are acting! Norman, you are a scoundrel!”

He scarcely started. Just as she had deemed Trafford mad, so Norman deemed her. What other explanation of her manner and words could there be?

[257]

“What is it you mean, Lady Wyndover?” he said, almost soothingly, certainly without any resentment—as yet. “Tell me as quickly as you can why you call me—what was it?—a scoundrel?”

His manner, the steady regard of his blue, honest eyes staggered her. She sunk on to a couch, and pressed her hand to her heart.

“Either you are a devil of deceit, or you—you have been wronged!” she gasped. “Esmeralda is not here; we—none of us know where she is; but we believe that she is with you!”

He started and gazed at her with wild eyes.

“Esmeralda with me? Why should she be with me, instead of here or at Belfayre? Explain!”

He spoke with the air of command which few women can resist. Lady Wyndover insensibly grew calmer.

“God forgive you if you are deceiving me, Norman!” she breathed. “We think that she has gone with you. She has left Belfayre—suddenly, without a word. You took her away with you!”

Norman’s face went white, and he bit his lip till the blood came.

“She has left Belfayre? When?”

“The morning the duke died. And left no word! Oh, you know—you know! Why do you stand there so shamelessly?”

“Because I am innocent!” said Norman, savagely. “Does—does Trafford believe this d—n foolery? I beg your pardon!”

The adjective, while it made her shudder, brought a sense of relief.

“Yes! It was he who came to me and told me. Norman, how could you do it? It was your fault, not hers! Oh, Norman, Norman, and we all trusted you so! You are the last person—”

“Thanks!” he said. “Never mind about me. You say Esmeralda has—has gone! Gone! Great Heaven! why?”

Lady Wyndover looked at him through dimmed eyes.

“Because—because you tempted her!” she said in a whisper. “Trafford saw you together in the fernery in the conservatory—he had other evidence; but that was enough.”

Norman uttered an exclamation; it was more like an oath. His brain was clearing from its bewilderment, and he was beginning to understand.

“Saw us in the fernery? Ah!” He drew a long breath.

[258]

“Yes; and he knew that you had known her before she came to England; that—that you had loved her.”

He nodded, his face white, his teeth set.

“I see,” he whispered to himself. “And he went and—and bullied her!”

“There was a quarrel—yes, a terrible scene that night, and in the morning she had gone. He said she confessed.”

Norman nodded again.

“Confessed!” he said. “You mean that she did not deny! No, she would not! She’d scorn to do so. I know her!” He had almost said—“better than Trafford does.” “Gone; of course she’s gone! And you are surprised—you who know what Esmeralda is, who have lived with her like a mother! You expected her to be accused of—of this and stand it!” He laughed with fierce bitterness. “My God! what fools people can be!”

Lady Wyndover stared at him.

“And—and you deny it!” she faltered, with a gleam of hope. “I—I said that you were not guilty. But—but the evidence!”

He laughed again, then his face grew red.

“Yes; looks bad, doesn’t it?” he said, scornfully. “I—I suppose you say he saw me—kiss her.”

Lady Wyndover trembled. Was her hope going to be destroyed?

Norman took a turn up and down the room, then confronted her.

“Lady Wyndover, I am going to tell you what no one but Esmeralda knows as yet. It is true that I once asked her to be my wife—”

Lady Wyndover drew a breath of fear.

—“Yes; but that was long ago. When I came back to England she was going to be married to Trafford. I loved her then still, but I stamped it out. Why, great Heaven! you might well call me a scoundrel if you thought me capable of robbing Trafford—Trafford!—of his wife! And he thinks it!”

“But—but the kiss—”

“Yes, I kissed her; all the world may know it, for there is no shame in it for her or me. The kiss was meant for—for some one else.” He faltered. “Lady Wyndover, I want Lilias to be my wife. Esmeralda knows it, and promised to help me; and in my gratitude, yes, and my love for her—for I still love her, though not as I love Lilias—”

Lady Wyndover sprung to her feet with a deep cry of relief, of thanksgiving; then her face fell.

[259]

“But—but you left Belfayre with her—without a word. Why?”

“Great heavens! don’t you know? I was wired for that morning. My mother was ill; she is ill now. I have only just left her. She will tell you: go to her.”

Lady Wyndover gasped as she sunk on to the couch again.

“But you left no word—no message.”

“Yes, I did!” he retorted, almost savagely. “I told—who was it I told?” He put his hand to his brow. “I can’t remember; my brain’s in a whirl. But you see now—you must see that I am innocent. My mother, she will tell you.”

Lady Wyndover put out a trembling hand and touched him on the arm.

“Oh, forgive me, Norman!” she cried. “I said from the first that you could not have done it. Forgive me!” Then she uttered an exclamation. “Esmeralda! If she did not go with you, where is she?”

The question stunned him.

“Has—has she not gone back? She must have done,” he said.

“No—no, she has not. Trafford would have telegraphed me at once. He knows that I am dying of anxiety and terror. Oh, Norman, think of her! Alone in the world, and so—so wretched! Where is she?”

“Have you been looking for her?” he asked, pacing up and down.

“Trafford—” she began; but he seemed scarcely to hear her.

His brain was at work, and at work clearer than Trafford’s, for many reasons; Esmeralda was not all the world to him now; though he loved her as a sister is loved, and he could be calmer than Trafford.

“She can not be with any friends or she would have written; they would have written,” said Lady Wyndover. “Besides, that is impossible. They would not hide her from us; and there is no one she knows intimately enough—”

He broke in upon her with a cry, the cry of a man who sees a glimmer of light through darkness.

“Three Star!” he cried.

Lady Wyndover stared at him open-eyed.

“Three Star! That place in Australia?”

He nodded excitedly.

“Of course! What an idiot I was not to think of it at once! That is where she has gone!” He tore out his watch, then[260] groaned. “I was thinking that I had only to catch a train to overtake her. But she must be on the sea by this time!”

He paced up and down.

“Don’t speak to me for a minute or two.”

Lady Wyndover watched him in something like awed silence; the careless, light-hearted boy suddenly loomed before her—a man; and a man of resources, a man to be relied upon.

“She must be followed at once and overtaken!” he said. “Keep calm,” for Lady Wyndover had risen as if about to start for somewhere, anywhere, at that very moment. “Wire and ask Trafford to come to you at once. Where is a form?”

She went to the desk and wrote as he dictated, and the telegram was dispatched.

“Now,” he said, “I will go and find out what vessel leaves for Melbourne; you must go down to my mother and explain that I can’t come back till to-morrow. You will find her better; but still too ill to hear the truth of this business. Tell her anything you like, but not the truth, please.”

“Yes,” said Lady Wyndover, feverishly.

“Wire to me at my club how she is,” he said. “You will get Trafford’s wire before you go; you can send that on to me. Wait a moment. Is there anything else we can think of? Yes; when Trafford comes send him to his rooms; I will have engaged a berth for him and have his things packed—”

Lady Wyndover caught his hand, and looking up into his face, began to cry.

“Oh, Norman, you—you make me feel so ashamed. But I said—I did say from the first—”

“That’s all right,” he said, pressing her hand and laughing brokenly. “It doesn’t matter about me. Esmeralda—Esmeralda! We’ve got to find her, to catch her before she gets to that place, before the story leaks out!”

He rang the bell and ordered a vehicle, and in ten minutes was being driven to the station.

Lady Wyndover got her things on and waited for the answer to her telegram. It came speedily; for telegrams from people in high place run swiftly.

“Trafford not here. In London. How is Esmeralda?”

Lady Wyndover uttered a cry at the simple question. Then she started off for Oakfield.

Norman went to the shipping agents and made his inquiries. A vessel started that night from the London Docks, another[261] left Liverpool on the next morning; the “Neptune,” from London, was the faster vessel.

Norman booked two berths—two, because they would afford more comfort and privacy—and Norman knew he would need both in his frame of mind. Then he took a cab to Trafford’s rooms.

The door was shut; no response met his knock. He went to the Marlborough and inquired of the porter.

“The duke was here this afternoon, my lord,” he said, “and he dines here to-night.”

Norman breathed a sigh of relief, then drove to his own club and called huskily for a soda and whisky. While he was drinking it, it occurred to him that Trafford would not have any traveling clothes up with him, and that, as he would most assuredly start for Three Star immediately he heard Norman’s exculpation, it would be awkward for him to travel, say, in an evening suit.

He went back to the rooms, but they were still closed and lifeless. Then, with a thoughtfulness which would have considerably amazed his friends, he went to an outfitter’s, bought an outfit, had it packed in an overland trunk, and started it down to the docks.

By that time he was famished, and as he drove to the Marlborough he wondered whether he could persuade Trafford to sit down to dinner before he had convinced him of his, Norman’s, innocence.

“The duke has not arrived, my lord,” said the porter.

Norman went in and waited. Time passed—slowly, then quickly. He began to fret and fidget. Then he remembered the telegram Lady Wyndover was to send him, cursed himself for his heartlessness—for he was a good son—and bounced off to his own club. The telegram was there.

“Lady D. quite out of danger, and going on very well. Is anxious that you should not come back on her account. T. in London.”

With this to cheer him a little, back he went to join Trafford.

“The duke has been in, my lord,” said a footman. “Did you wish to see him?”

“Did I! Good heavens, didn’t you know? Didn’t the porter tell you? Where is the porter?”

“He has gone out, my lord. I’m afraid the duke is not coming here again this evening. I heard him tell the cabman to drive to Waterloo.”

[262]

Norman looked at his watch and groaned.

“Ask the duke, if he comes in again, to please come to the London Docks, ‘E’ side, as fast as he can,” he said. He drove to the docks. Outside the gates was a shabby coffee stall. It was not the first time Norman had roughed it, and he ate his rasher of bacon and drank the “coffee” without outward grumbling. If Trafford would only arrive!

He crossed over to the agent’s office.

“Has any one inquired for me?” he asked.

“No, my lord,” said the man. “Your trunk has come. I have had it put in your berth. Perhaps you’d like to go aboard and get comfortable before she starts?”

Norman started, then went white and trembled—actually trembled.

Why not? Why should he not follow her? Trafford was not here, the berths were booked, the ship would sail to-night—in half an hour! His mother was out of danger—better! In what more effectual way could he prove his great love for and gratitude to Esmeralda than in going after her and in restoring her to love and happiness?

He set his teeth tight.

“Yes,” he said, grimly. “I think you’re right. I’ll go aboard. Can you give me a light? Thanks. If any one comes for me—even at the last moment—let me know, anyhow, at any cost.”

He stepped on board.